


Another New Beginning

by crapoftheworld



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Again, Altean Lance (Voltron), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Angst, BAMF Lance (Voltron), Eventual Keith/Lance (Voltron), First Meetings, Galaxy Garrison, Human Allura (Voltron), Japanese Keith (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Angst, Keith/Lance (Voltron)-centric, LMAO, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron) Has Panic Attacks, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oops, POV Keith (Voltron), POV Lance (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Lance (Voltron), Pre-Canon, Roleswap, Slow Burn, but its magic, is evil, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:46:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24739453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crapoftheworld/pseuds/crapoftheworld
Summary: If Lance hadn’t left, Keith would’ve been stuck as a cargo pilot. Which he wouldn’t have minded, necessarily. But when he moved up to fighter class, he had been able to be in a new squad with his old friend Katie. And despite his secretiveness, Hunk had been a good friend, too. Plus, Shiro had been thrilled by the news.***Shiro never went on the Kerberos mission, Keith and Allura are humans, Hunk's family is missing, Pidge is still a gremlin, and Lance can't remember his mysterious past. Welcome to the new Voltron.
Relationships: Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron), Lance & Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 102
Kudos: 348





	1. Another Funeral

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShiranaiAtsune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiranaiAtsune/gifts).



> Set up: We’re starting before Voltron has been discovered, while all of the main characters are still involved with the Galaxy Garrison. Also, since this timeline might be slightly confusing, Kerberos happened and went missing at the same time as it did in canon, except Garrison cadets are recruited from a slightly younger age in this AU so like, everyone in the paladins’ age group would have personally known the people that went on the Kerberos mission (because they were teachers). 
> 
> Here you go, Shiranai! IDK how often it will update, but rest assured there's secret BAMF!Lance in the future :D

Funny how it always seemed to rain at funerals. And despite being only seventeen, Keith had been to enough to know.

Before he had been given a chance at the Garrison, he’d buried his father. He didn’t remember the funeral very well, but he remembered crying into his mother’s black dress, clutching his sister’s hand. And he remembered the fat droplets of water falling from the heavens, washing away his tears.

Then he had met Shiro, and he had been accepted into the Galaxy Garrison. And things seemed like they would be alright, despite how far away from his family he was. But in Keith’s limited experience, good things never last. When he got a call from Acxa that his grandmother had passed away in her sleep, he hadn’t cried. Shiro had driven him to the airport, and then he met with his mom and sister and his mom’s fiance, Kolivan.

Despite it being a hot summer day in Osaka, a light drizzle had begun outside as Keith sat stiffly in the cold room, a complete stranger reading his grandmother’s eulogy and eventually handing an urn to his mother. He knew the urn still sat in his mom’s study, that it was all that was left of the woman who used to pack bento boxes for him and Acxa before they went to school.

But when he emerged from that memorial service, Kolivan’s arm wrapped around his shoulder, the drizzling had come to a stop. It wasn’t a pleasant freshness that hung in the air, but an oppressive humidity brought on by the sun’s rays beating down relentlessly on the small puddles that had formed on the pavement in the nearly empty parking lot. At least there had been a rainbow.

Now, it was raining again. Pouring, nearly. His mom was with him again, too. Kolivan and Acxa hadn’t been able to make it. Adam was standing nearby, and the sight of him crying was so unfamiliar to Keith, it was slightly disarming. This was the private funeral. Keith had already sat through the public memorial, where several Garrison leaders had delivered tear-jerking speeches about the man Keith was finally laying to rest today.

A lot of people had shown up to the public memorial, many of them Keith’s classmates and teachers. Even Lance _fucking_ McClain had shown up, which was like seeing a ghost from the past. Keith hadn’t seen him since he had been suspended for disciplinary issues a few semesters ago and never bothered to come back. He wondered what kind of relationship Lance had with his brother that meant enough for him to come out of his self-imposed exile.

His brother. That was who he was burying today, while his mother stood solemnly by his side.

Takashi Shirogane had died.

Shiro’s parents were also under the tent, weeping, and Adam was standing nearby. Standing alone. Because his partner was _dead._

When Shiro had first told Keith about his disease, something called Becker muscular dystrophy, he had assured Keith that he wouldn’t be dying any time soon. That all it meant was that his piloting career might come to an end sooner rather than later.

Of course, Keith knew better than to take Shiro’s words at face value, the blind optimist that he was. He had spent many nights in his dorm room reading all about BMD. The potential symptoms, treatments, the fact that it was currently incurable despite all of the resources the government had allocated to disease research centers after the last plague.

Keith remembered how difficult the decision was for Shiro to make, to not go on the Kerberos mission. He knew that Shiro sometimes regretted that decision, knew their late-night races in the desert that ended in star gazing weren’t just for fun.

But he also knew that Shiro truly loved Adam. Their wedding had been fully planned, fully paid for. Keith was wearing the suit right now, the one he had bought to wear at the ceremony. He hadn’t even gotten around to writing his best man speech yet.

The wedding would’ve been a week from today.

Instead, Shiro’s body was finally being laid to rest in the Galaxy Garrison cemetery. Surrounded by other successful pilots, teachers, and generals, yet one of the youngest souls by far.

The doctor said that Shiro’s heart had stopped pumping in his sleep. It was thanks to the congestive heart failure he suffered from, part of the wonderful BMD package deal. But despite reassurances that it would’ve been painless, even a peaceful way to go, Keith didn’t see how any part of this could be okay.

He couldn’t imagine what Adam had gone through, waking up next to the unmoving body of the love of his life. He couldn’t imagine what Shiro’s parents were thinking as they buried their only son. And Keith, despite being surrounded by a loving family for most of his life, had never intended to say goodbye to Shiro, his brother. Not like this. Not so soon.

The rain continued pounding all around this sad gathering of people, thoroughly soaking the earth where so many more people were waiting for Shiro to join them.

The nearest graves were empty, though. They belonged to the three people who had gone on the Kerberos mission, Mrs. and Mrs. Garrett and Allura Alleyne, the pilot that had gone in Shiro’s place.

The Garretts were Hunk’s parents. Keith didn’t know him very well, even though he was the communications officer in his squad. After the news broke about Kerberos, Hunk had grown more reserved, sneaking off a lot to do God knows what in the dead of night. Keith figured he deserved his privacy. He knew that he would have grown tired of strangers offering him endless condolences, too.

Allura used to be one of Keith’s teachers. She had been good friends with Shiro and Adam, Keith remembered. She had been good friends with Lance, too, one of the only teachers who had managed to connect with him.

Keith felt guilty, yet grateful all the same, that it had been Allura to be killed on the Kerberos mission. That Shiro had been able to stay on earth and live out the rest of his days, though fewer in number than anticipated, surrounded by the people he loved. By the people that loved him.

Keith didn’t really know what he would do now. He knew Shiro had wanted him to finish his training at the Garrison, follow in his footsteps and become a pilot. But Shiro was gone now, and Keith had never really taken to piloting, not like some of the other cadets had. Not like Lance.

If Lance hadn’t left, Keith would’ve been stuck as a cargo pilot. Which he wouldn’t have minded, necessarily. But when he moved up to fighter class, he had been able to be in a new squad with his old friend Katie. And despite his secretiveness, Hunk had been a good friend, too. Plus, Shiro had been _thrilled_ by the news.

Maybe Keith could go back home, to Japan. He could spend more time with Krolia and Acxa, talk to Kolivan some. He knew that they could always use an extra hand around the house, that some extra spending money wouldn’t hurt.

But Keith also appreciated all of the sacrifices that he and his family had made to get him to where he was. He knew that Acxa had given up her dreams so that he could come to the Garrison and be a pilot. And he figured that even if he didn’t already feel like he owed it to Shiro, he would finish his training for his family.

He would graduate, pilot a few missions. If he could manage it, he would hang on to the few precious friends he had acquired. Maybe someday, he could track down Lance McClain, the only person Keith ever remembered actively trying to befriend. The only person that had ever looked at him without any judgment in his eyes, yet brushed him off all the same. Keith wondered if Lance even remembered his name.

If he was being honest with himself, he knew he thought about Lance much too often for it to be normal, for it not to mean something. But Keith was very good at _not_ being honest with himself, and besides, he was in mourning right now.

Takashi Shirogane was dead, and the unforgiving torrent of rain seemed like it would never slow, never give way to something else. It seemed like the sun would never come out again, that the rest of Keith’s sad existence would be shrouded in the oppressive gloom of rainclouds.

Luckily for him, he had enough experience with both rain and funerals to know that would not be the case. Keith could move on from this. He would go back to his dorm, Katie would give him a hug, Acxa would text him at 3 AM due to the time difference, and everything would more or less go back to normal.

Keith could make his peace with Shiro’s death. He was glad that they at least had a body to bury.

As he stood beneath the hastily erected funeral tent, his mother’s hand firmly gripping his black-clad shoulder, he said his final goodbye to Shiro, just like he had done with his father and grandmother. He said goodbye to Shiro, who had been a mentor and surrogate brother to him.

He said his goodbye, and then he shrugged off his mother’s hand, leaving the tent and the sadness and the tears behind. He wandered through the empty cemetery, the cold rain soaking through the fabric of his suit and washing away the familiar feelings of heartbreak and loss.

***

Lance had always loved the rain. There was something about it that felt so familiar, even if Lance couldn’t really place the feeling. It seemed like it had been a long time since the last proper storm in the Nebraska desert.

Even though he didn’t necessarily mind the rain, he couldn’t really explain why he had driven off in the middle of the torrent of water. All he knew was that it wasn’t the first time something had called him. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last time he answered.

Ever since Allura had disappeared and Lance moved into Shiro’s desert shack, he’d been feeling a strange pull. There were rock formations out there, ones that looked like they could’ve been featured in a museum. The drawings he found depicted some sort of… mechanical man. Different ruins told different stories, but they were always about the robot and what appeared to be a lion.

It could’ve been a prank, some stupid joke that the kids boarding at the Garrison thought was hilarious. But Lance couldn’t discount the inexplicable force that drew him back to the desert. Day or night. Rain or shine.

Lance was currently huddled in a cave, stoking a fire he’d managed to get going. The rain was really coming down outside, and if he was being honest, this cave wasn’t necessarily any worse than the shack he usually spent his nights in.

Allura would’ve told him to go home. That it was cold, and he shouldn’t be out wandering all on his own. But she had left him alone.

At least Shiro understood.

No matter how much Lance despised the Galaxy Garrison, he knew that Takashi Shirogane deserved his respect. So he had gotten his shit together, shaved and cut his hair for the first time in months, and driven the couple of hours back to the Garrison to attend the public memorial.

He’d felt the eyes of all of his old classmates boring into him, knew that Adam would try to pull him aside after the memorial and ask him where the fuck he had been. It was almost too easy to slip away again, to disappear and leave it all behind.

When the Kerberos mission was announced a failure due to pilot error, Lance had known something was very wrong with that. Not because of his blind faith in Allura’s abilities as a pilot, but because he had seen the mission plans. He had seen the footage. There were fucking _aliens_ out there.

He hadn’t left the Garrison immediately. He’d talked to Shiro and Adam. If Lance was being honest with himself, he hadn’t wanted to leave again, to be alone. He’d already spent so much of his life in isolation, and even if he wasn’t necessarily befriending any of the students at the Garrison, Shiro was someone he could work with.

Who he couldn’t _fucking_ work with was James Griffin. Lance knew that he’d fucked up, that he’d almost killed the kid, but seriously. _Who bullies orphans these days?_ That’s just low hanging fruit.

“Why are we out here, Lance?”

Lance shook his head, clearing it, and peered across the flickering fire. Shiro was just as soaked as he was, leaning towards the flames to try to warm up. He hadn’t let Lance drive out by himself despite the weather. Maybe because he knew that if Lance found something, he wouldn’t hesitate to leave him behind.

“You know why,” he said, and his voice echoed through the cave, barely audible over the pounding rain.

“You’re not going to find anything,” Shiro replied, rubbing his hands together and shivering.

“Then why bother following me?”

An uneasy silence settled over them again, the only sound the constant drone of the deluge and an occasional rumble of thunder.

Lance had helped Shiro fake his death, of course, maybe about a year after he had officially dropped out of the Garrison. Besides Allura, Shiro had been the only one to know about Lance’s upbringing. The fact that there were so many gaping holes in Lance’s memory, that he was inexplicably skilled in a fighting style that bore only a mild resemblance to any that they knew of. That there were strange blue marks on his cheeks but if he focused on them enough, they would go away.

And after they discovered that the Kerberos mission had been captured by _aliens_ and the Garrison was covering it up, they knew they were fucked. Shiro, though a skilled pilot, had left digital footprints all over the information he had accessed in Iverson’s office. Information that he most certainly didn’t have the clearance for.

And the Garrison had caught onto him, had threatened Adam, even Keith Kogane, to keep Shiro quiet. The death had all been Shiro’s idea, but Lance had easily gone along with it. He was already a ghost, and now Shiro was, too.

Lance traced his fingers over the delicately carved images on the cave wall. A lion twice the size of a Garrison fighter jet. Five humanoid figures, standing proudly. The robotic man looming over them. An inscription in a language that Lance was sure wasn’t from anywhere on earth.

Aliens were real. They had taken Allura. Shiro thought that Lance might have been one. _An alien._ And Lance was sitting in a cave with a dead man.

Lance suddenly wasn’t a fan of the silence, though he supposed that he never had been. He thought he might have been a loud and boisterous child. He remembered running through the waves, eating something _spicy,_ speaking in a tongue he no longer remembers.

“Do you regret it?” he asked abruptly, and Shiro looked up from where he was staring into the smoldering fire on the cave floor.

The flames cast flickering shadows on his face, making him look significantly older. The tuft of white hair, a product of stress, didn't take any years off of his appearance.

“Regret what?”

Lance gave the other man a blank glare. He didn’t like repeating himself, and Shiro had at least learned that much by now.

“Sometimes. Adam promised me that he’d look out for Keith, and I trust him. It’s just… I worry about him. About Keith.”

Lance vaguely remembered him. Keith Kogane, top of the cargo pilot class, a skilled pilot in his own right. Lance supposed he must have been promoted after he left. Keith was nice enough, but kind of quiet and broody. Lance had been too, though. They may have exchanged a few words in passing, but now that Lance thought about it he hardly knew the man. He meant a lot to Shiro, probably more than Lance did.

“Tell me about him.”

Another sigh. The rain wasn’t letting up. A puddle of water was slowly seeping in through the entrance of the cave -- they would probably have to return to the shack soon if they didn’t want to be washed away.

“Well, you know Keith,” Shiro began, then looked up at Lance’s blank face and frowned. “Or at least, _he_ knew _you._ He talked about you a lot, you know.”

 _Keith._ Keith, Keith, Keith. It was the pale boy, the one with a jet black mop of hair and a hesitant smile. Lance was almost certain he remembered trading glares with the other, remembered feeling a brief flare of competitiveness when they were paired up to race in the simulators.

“I guess he’s a little shy. He came here from Japan on a scholarship. I found him when I was sent on a recruiting tour,” Shiro began, a wistful, faraway look in his eye. “He’s a natural pilot, he just lacks the dedication... You two actually have a lot in common.”

“How’s that?” Lance prompted easily, poking at the dying flames of his fire with a stick. Even he was beginning to feel cold in his thoroughly soaked clothes.

“You’re both skilled pilots who don’t have the passion. You both have anger issues. Your mentors are both…”

Shiro trailed off, looking down at his lap. Lance didn’t often feel guilty, but he felt something in his chest tighten at the look on Shiro’s face.

“Dead,” Lance finished helpfully. “Except Allura _wasn’t_ my mentor, she’s probably not dead or you wouldn’t be out here with me, and someday, this will all blow over and you can go back to your old life.”

“You’ve never struck me as an overly optimistic person,” Shiro said quietly, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

Lance stood, offering a hand to Shiro and kicking dirt onto the flames. The line of water had nearly reached where they were sitting at the back of the cave.

“Maybe not, but I _do_ have a pretty good track record when it comes to listening to my gut. And my gut says everything will turn out just fine for you and Keith.”

Shiro caught the keys Lance tossed his way, both of them grabbing their helmets and shoving them over wet hair. Lance slid onto the back of the speeder while Shiro took the wheel.

“Yeah? And what does your gut say about you?” Shiro asked over the roar of the ignition.

Lance didn’t bother answering that question, instead watching as the Nebraskan desert and fat droplets of water whizzed by. It was peaceful out here. There was nothing that stirred up his inner turmoil, that brought up blurry, half-formed memories of a family and _love_ that he couldn’t quite make sense of.

Something was going to happen soon, _that_ Lance could feel. He had spent too long in the desert, blindly following whatever force was tugging him like a dog on a leash all through the rocky Nebraska landscape.

Something big was going to happen, and Lance knew it would change everything.


	2. Another Crash Landing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follows the events of the VLD pilot (about halfway through)

“Come on,” Keith hissed, motioning for Katie to move with him.

They darted around the corner and took refuge behind the recycling bins, barely avoiding the passing patrol. Keith exhaled slowly, trying to stay quiet. Only once the guard had moved on did he draw in another breath.

“Remind me why I agreed to this again?”

“You’re bored? I’m sad and you want to cheer me up? To stick it to the establishment? Take your pick,” Keith retorted, rounding another corner and stopping in his tracks.

Hunk Garrett was emerging from Commander Iverson’s office, looking distinctly like he didn’t belong there. Keith stuck an arm across Katie’s chest, stopping her from going any further. He looked at his friend and tried to motion with his hands that he wanted to follow Hunk. Katie rolled her eyes.

They snuck back through the halls, silently stalking their communications officer up a couple of flights of stairs and emerging on the roof. It was a beautiful night, no clouds to obscure the vast array of stars. And Hunk was sitting on the edge of the roof looking out over the desert, fiddling with some strange machines that were _definitely_ not Garrison tech.

“Come up here often?” Katie suddenly said, and Keith glared at her even as Hunk nearly screamed, whipping around to face them.

“Oh, Pidge. Keith. Uh… I didn’t see you there.”

Now that the jig was up, Keith moved closer to look at Hunk’s strange collection of machinery.

“Where’d you get this stuff? It looks homemade.”

“That’s because it _is,_ ” Hunk said, slapping Katie’s questing hand away. “I can see all the way to the edge of the solar system with this stuff.”

“And why do you need to see all the way to the edge of the solar system?” Keith asked.

He had a feeling he already knew the answer, that it had something to do with the Kerberos mission, but Keith was in no way prepared for what Hunk said next.

“I've been scanning the system and picking up alien radio chatter.”

Katie glanced over at Keith, eyes wide. They’d always speculated about the existence of aliens together, had binged their fair share of History channel specials. But Keith hadn’t ever _really_ believed when it came down to it. He’d just liked the idea, the ridiculousness.

“Aliens?” Katie prompted, seemingly going for the cool, calm, and collected approach to the current situation rather than telling Hunk he was insane.

“Yes, aliens! They keep repeating the word ‘Voltron,’” Hunk said excitedly, holding up a pad of paper on which he had doodled a weird robot guy and written Voltron in multi-colored ink, complete with little stars and explosions. “Tonight it's going crazier than I’ve ever heard it.”

Keith wasn’t going to buy it. He wasn’t. He was a rational, level-headed person who had just gone through the trauma of losing yet another person that was close to him. He had just been reprimanded by Commander Iverson for failing in the simulator. And aliens weren’t real. _Unless they were._

“...How crazy?”

Before Hunk could answer, the alarms started blaring and the speaker system buzzed to life, broadcasting Iverson’s voice throughout the campus.

“Attention, students. This is not a drill. We are on lockdown! Security situation Zulu Niner. Repeat: All students are to remain in barracks until further notice.”

And Keith might have considered dragging his friends back inside and forgetting any of this ever happened. Except Shiro was gone, and he didn’t have much to lose anyway. Besides, as he stood on the roof with his team, something _big_ entered the atmosphere, leaving a trail of flames.

“Are you guys seeing that thing? Is it a meteor?” Katie asked, scrambling around Hunk to get a better view.

Keith noticed the binoculars around Hunk’s neck and snatched them before the other could protest. When he brought them to his eyes, he saw… he saw…

“You’ve gotta be _fucking_ kidding me.”

“What?” Katie shrieked, grabbing for the binoculars, but Keith batted her hands away and kept staring in awe.

“It’s a spaceship. And it's not one of ours.”

“No,” Hunk agreed, and he looked grim. “It’s one of theirs.”

The three fell into morbid silence, watching as the spaceship crashed in the desert and feeling the accompanying _thoom_ rock through the Garrison building they were standing on. Land rovers were already rolling out, approaching the smoking wreckage.

“I’m going to go see the ship,” Hunk said, and then he was packing up all of his machines and shoving his way back into the building. Keith shared another look with Katie, but they both knew each other too well to need to have a verbal conversation. They followed Hunk.

***

“Lance! Get out here!”

Lance was at the stove, heating water for the pasta he was going to make for dinner. As it turned out, Shiro was useless in the kitchen. He’d nearly burned the house down a few weeks ago, and Lance didn’t understand how he could be _that_ incompetent when he was a world-renowned pilot.

Lance turned the stove off, grabbing a knife out of the block and going to the back porch where Shiro was. _You can never be too careful._ Even if the last time Shiro had summoned him was to ask what kind of animal the vultures were picking at. It had been an armadillo.

“What’s--”

He never finished his question because he immediately saw the reason Shiro had called for him. It was something _big,_ hurtling at an alarming speed towards the planet’s surface.

“You’re seeing the alien ship too, right?”

“Yeah,” Lance breathed out, so distracted by the outlandish sight that he momentarily forgot about the marks on his cheeks, didn’t notice that they had started glowing. The slight tingling sensation on his face snapped him out of his reverie, though.

“Whatever’s in there, we need to get to it first.”

“Alright,” Shiro agreed, finally tearing his eyes away from the smoking spaceship that had just collided with the ground. He looked over at Lance and his eyes widened in surprise. “Your marks--”

“I know. Not important. Can you go set off the explosives? I’ll need a distraction,” Lance said, already going back into the house and pulling on boots and a blue bandana to cover his face. His mind was too scattered for him to be able to obscure the crescent-shaped marks on his cheeks right now.

“What, so you’re going up against Garrison defenses on your own?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Lance said as he traded the kitchen knife for his actual knife, a beautiful silver dagger and the only thing tied to his past that he owned. “I’ll have _you_ watching my back.”

Shiro sighed in exaggerated disappointment but grabbed the backpack full of homemade bombs nonetheless. They both knew Lance could handle himself, Shiro just liked to worry. But this was important and Lance didn’t want to take any chances, and he knew having someone else with him would only slow him down.

“Fine. Just… don’t kill anyone tonight, alright?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Lance didn’t bother with his helmet, hopping onto the desert speeder and giving Shiro a salute before driving off towards the plume of smoke. Shiro would walk in the opposite direction, plant the explosives, and hopefully when he set them off it would give Lance the opening he needed to infiltrate the crash site.

***

“There’s too many guards. We’ll never be able to get close enough to look,” Keith whispered, passing the binoculars off to Katie.

“Yeah, it’s not looking very promising. Hunk?”

Hunk continued typing on his laptop, ignoring the others. He looked really invested in whatever he was doing, so Keith tore his eyes away from the smoking alien spaceship ( _holy shit, aliens_ ) to see what he was doing.

“Hold on… Alright, I’ve got their camera feed! Check it out,” Hunk said, and indeed a high-quality video feed had popped up on Hunk’s monitor showing the inside of the tent the Garrison had set up a few meters away from the alien wreckage. Keith could see the back of who he assumed was Iverson, and someone strapped to the table… _There’s no way._

“Let me go! You _must_ listen to me, aliens are coming! They’ve destroyed _worlds!”_

That was the unmistakable voice of Allura Alleyne. The pilot of the Kerberos mission. Keith spared a glance at Hunk and noted that his gaze had hardened as the conversation on the hacked camera feed continued.

“Calm down, Allura. We just need to keep you quarantined until we run some tests on you. Do you know how long you’ve been gone?” Iverson asked.

“That’s the pilot from the Kerberos mission, right?” Katie stated more than asked, adjusting her glasses as she watched the video feed. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”

Hunk remained quiet, simply watching the video with a blank face. If Keith had to label his expression, he would say the other man looked _angry._

“I don't know. Months? Years? There's no time for this! Aliens are coming here for a weapon. They're probably on their way as we speak. They'll destroy us! We have to find Voltron!” Allura’s voice proclaimed through the tinny speakers on Hunk’s computer.

The small group of cadets all inhaled sharply at the mention of Voltron. This was all getting a bit too real for Keith. The intercepted alien transmissions, the fact that Voltron was apparently a real thing, the fact that Allura Alleyne was _alive._

The people on screen continued talking. Apparently Allura had a cyborg prosthetic leg, and the whole time the scientists were examining her prone body, she was begging them to let her go. Yelling about aliens and Voltron. The scientists decided to sedate her despite her protests.

“We have to get her out of there,” Hunk said quietly, looking between Keith and Katie.

“Aren’t we watching on cameras because we can’t get past the guards?” Katie said doubtfully, and Hunk frowned, turning back to the wreckage with a look of determination on his face.

“I’m sure we can find a way. Maybe we can tunnel in?”

Keith wilted under the two unimpressed glares he got for that suggestion.

“What we need is a distraction,” Hunk said thoughtfully, and right as he finished that sentence a series of explosions went off a little ways away, beyond the wrecked spaceship.

“Holy shit! Was that the aliens? We’re all gonna die!” Katie yelled, clutching at Keith’s arm.

“No, those explosions _were_ the distraction. For _him,_ ” Hunk said, pointing at a shadowy figure on a speeder that had just arrived at the crash zone.

Keith snatched the binoculars back from Katie and balked at what he saw.

“No fucking way! Come on, let’s go,” Keith said, finally standing up and starting down the cliff that they had been spying on the wreck from.

“Who is it?” Katie asked, and Keith just scoffed as he and his two friends skidded down the rocky cliff.

“Lance _fucking_ McClain.”

***

It was times like these that Lance was thankful for Shiro’s impeccable timing. They hadn’t planned this very well. If he could count what they had agreed about twenty minutes ago to as a plan at all.

But it had worked, the land rovers had all pulled out to investigate the explosions Shiro had set off and Lance was closing in on the unguarded entrance to the Garrison tent near the crashed spaceship. The spaceship itself was made of white metal with glowing blue lights, which Lance found strangely familiar. Judging by the size, it was probably just an escape pod. He heard the voices of a few technicians inside the tent, counting a total of three moving bodies.

“These readings are off the charts. I can’t believe--”

Lance burst in, immediately launching himself at the nearest person in a grey uniform. He easily overpowered the surprised Garrison scientist, dodging a hastily thrown punch and decking the man, sending him sprawling on the floor.

He quickly spun around to kick another approaching technician in the stomach, causing her to hunch over and gasp for breath. He locked his fingers together and brought his fists down on her back with brutal efficiency. The woman sunk to the ground, groaning in pain. _One to go._

He grinned under his bandana as he approached the final technician, who took a step back for every step Lance took forward, eventually backing himself into a corner. Despite having no recollection of any combat training and not having enrolled in those types of courses at the Garrison, Lance was certain that he’d been fighting all his life.

But just like his childhood and his family, those memories were buried in some dark crevice of his mind, unreachable.

There was someone on a table in the middle of the room, but Lance hadn’t spared them a glance yet. It was time to finish this. As he closed in on the final Garrison technician, the man pulled a scalpel from his coat pocket and blindly swiped at Lance, who easily sidestepped the attack. But now he was angry.

Lance grabbed the scientist by the lapels, slamming him into a cart of surgical instruments and yanking his own knife out from its sheath, winding back to drive it through the other man’s throat and end his life.

But the Garrison man’s eyes had widened to an impossibly large size and Lance suddenly remembered what Shiro had said at the beginning of all of this.

_“Just… don’t kill anyone tonight, alright?”_

“Fuck.”

Lance grunted, changing the course of his knife at the last second so that it became firmly lodged in the metal cart instead of the neck of the wide-eyed technician. Lance grabbed the Garrison man by the hair and slammed his head against the floor, knocking him out cold.

He resheathed his knife and turned around to see who was strapped to the table. It turned out to be someone he recognized.

“Allura…?”

As he released the cuffs binding Allura to the table and helped her to her feet (she was unconscious, probably drugged), he heard noises coming from the entrance and tensed up, free hand going for his knife out of habit. Then two Galaxy Garrison cadets burst into the room.

“Lance, what are you doing?”

Lance knew that voice. He recognized the mullet and the red jacket, and he would have preferred it if _anyone_ else had shown up tonight. _Time to improvise._

“Who're you?”

Keith’s brows furrow and he looks annoyed but also kind of bewildered. _Cute._ The big man behind Keith spoke up first, though.

“That’s Keith. I’m Hunk, and Pidge is outside.”

Lance just stared at the two cadets silently, slinging one of Allura’s arms around his shoulder and starting to exit the Garrison tent. The other two shared a look and followed him back out into the cool Nebraska desert.

“They're coming back and they do _not_ look happy. We gotta go!” a smaller cadet shouted when she saw the procession of people emerging from the tent. Must be Pidge.

Lance kept walking, heading toward his speeder. He spent a few moments trying to arrange Allura’s limbs on the back, then hopped onto the driver’s seat and revved up the transport.

“Uh, do you mind if we catch a ride with you?” Hunk asked, looking kind of sheepish.

 _These guys were really stupid, huh?_ They just charged in with no exit strategy. Lance stared at them for a couple of moments, assessing.

Honestly, he didn’t want to bring Keith back home, didn’t want to see what kind of shit storm would blow up in his face when Keith realized Shiro was _alive._ And Hunk must be Hunk Garrett. His parents had been on the Kerberos mission. And Pidge was clearly an alias, and he couldn’t trust people who had something to hide. These people were liabilities.

And besides, Lance wasn't sure if his shitty speeder could handle the weight of five people.

“Yup,” he said, and from the hesitant step forward that Pidge took, he supposed they didn’t quite understand what he was saying. “I _do_ mind.”

Then he was kicking up a cloud of dust and zooming off into the desert. He heard outraged shouts behind him, Iverson’s voice instructing the cadets to put their hands up, and the sound of Garrison land rovers in pursuit that he easily outmaneuvered out in the rocky landscape that he knew like the back of his hand.

He’d just rescued Allura Alleyne, who was supposed to be _dead,_ from a crashed spaceship. Who knows where she’d been for the year and a half she’d been missing. Wherever she'd gone, she'd found time for a new hair color and a prosthetic leg. She could know about the aliens, about the strange cave drawings of gigantic robots and mechanical lions, maybe even about Lance’s past.

So he ignored the brief feeling of guilt that had flaired in his chest when he left those cadets to eat his dust. There were bigger things to worry about now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance honey, don't murder the random Garrison scientists! Is the implication here that Shiro has seen Lance kill someone before? Perhaps...
> 
> Also Keith is chill because he wasn't abandoned by his entire family at a young age? He's had a pretty normal life. Lance is socially awkward boi in this one, but he's still his classic flirty self because?? It's Lance I love him.


	3. Another Unanswered Question

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so I bullshitted like all of the military protocol stuff but it sounds kind of cool? Maybe? I tried.

“So which one of you is going to tell me why three cadets ignored a direct order from your superior, trespassed on government property, and aided in the kidnapping of one of our officers?”

“I’m sure she’s better off with Lance anyways,” Katie mumbled under her breath.

“What was that, cadet?” Iverson practically growled, and Keith could see the moment that Katie decided to shut up. Hunk, however, looked about ready to blow a fuse.

“We _saw_ Allura, and we saw that you drugged her without her consent! She was trying to warn you guys about a threat! There’s aliens out there, and that spaceship was proof!”

“Mr. Garrett, I can assure you that we’re fully aware of that stunt you pulled, hacking into a government-operated security camera. Now, if the three of you don’t want to be tried as adults for your participation in a terrorist plot, you’ll sign these agreements and you’ll tell me what happened.”

If Keith had found himself in this situation on any other day, he probably would’ve been his usual bull-headed self, completely unwilling to compromise. But _Lance McClain_ had left him and his friends to fend for themselves, and Keith was more than a little pissed. He was angry enough to rat that asshole out to Iverson, at least.

“If I tell you what happened and we sign those contracts, you’ll let us go?”

“Keith, what are you doing?” Katie hissed at him, but he glared at her and her mouth snapped shut. Iverson looked at him expectantly.

“We saw the spaceship enter the atmosphere from the roof, so we decided to move closer to get a better look. I guess you already know about Hunk hacking into the cameras, and that’s when we saw Allura. Then there were some weird explosions out past the Garrison, and when the land rovers left to investigate, Lance showed up.”

“Lance McClain?” Iverson asked, and Keith scowled.

“Yeah, Lance _McClain._ He grabbed Allura, and we tried to stop him,” Keith said, trying to subtly kick both Katie’s and Hunk’s shins under the table. “But he got away. And that’s about it.”

Iverson was silent for a moment, writing some things down on his tablet, before frowning and looking back up at the group.

“Anything else you’d like to add? Ms. Holt? Mr. Garrett?”

“Nope, definitely not! That was a perfect retelling of tonight’s events,” Katie squeaked nervously, and Hunk nodded along. Keith winced at his friend’s performance, but Iverson didn’t press any further so he supposed it was a win.

Iverson proceeded to shove three tablets into each of their hands. Keith skimmed through the contract. It appeared to be a classic non-disclosure agreement, minus getting paid a ton of money to keep their mouths shut. Not getting booted from the Garrison would have to do.

They all signed the digital contracts and returned the tablets to Iverson, who looked pleased.

“Now, Lance McClain has been off the grid for quite some time now. And besides the kidnapping tonight, McClain has been tied to several other cases where sensitive Garrison intelligence was stolen from our servers. The last time he was seen before tonight’s… incident was at the memorial service for Takashi Shirogane.”

Keith’s mouth went dry. He didn’t like thinking about either of the people Iverson had just mentioned.

“With all due respect, sir,” Hunk began, also looking a little uncomfortable, “why are you telling us all of this?”

“Because, Mr. Garrett, as part of your reparations for your involvement in tonight’s highly illegal activities, you will be putting those computer programming skills to good use. Aiding the Garrison in tracking down Lance McClain.”

 _“What?”_ Keith said, tone dangerously level. “There’s no way getting cadets to help in an official investigation is protocol.”

“You’re quite right, Mr. Kogane. Luckily for us, you just signed away any rights you have to talk about tonight’s events, _or_ any of the fallout.”

“But--”

“Ms. Holt, I expect to be shown proper respect as your superior officer. Now, it's late and you have classes tomorrow morning. You three will meet me in my office after your courses. Dismissed.”

Keith stood numbly, frowning all the while. He and his fellow cadets walked back to the dorms in brooding silence, likely reflecting on everything that had just happened. Aliens. Allura. Lance. The Garrison being shifty (or maybe just Iverson, but Keith figured it went all the way to the top).

When Keith stopped outside his and Katie’s dorm, Hunk accepted the silent invitation extended to him and followed them inside.

When the door shut with a quiet _click,_ Keith finally exploded.

“Okay, there’s no way that what just happened was normal! The Garrison is trying to cover this shit up! They want to find Lance and put him away and keep it all quiet. I guarantee that Allura won’t get a chance to--”

“Just calm down for a second, Keith. I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for all of this. Iverson asking for Hunk’s help makes sense,” Katie said with an unusual level-headedness. Keith found that in this particular situation, he would’ve preferred another anxious freakout like the one he was experiencing. “He hacked into a closed government loop somehow. He’ll be able to find Lance. And there’s no way more people didn’t see the spaceship last night. They’ll have to address it at some point tomorrow.”

“Hunk, you have to agree that this is fucking insane! We’re essentially being blackmailed into tracking someone for the Garrison!”

“Technically, Lance _did_ kidnap Allura--”

“Yeah, but we would’ve gone with them if he’d let us, Katie!”

The bickering faded to a contemplative silence that seemed to stretch into infinity. Keith nearly drifted off to sleep. Despite all of the excitement, it _was_ pretty late. Technically, Hunk was breaking curfew by bunking in his and Katie’s dorm for the night.

“Alright, what if we found Lance first?”

Katie looked over at Hunk incredulously.

“Uh, weren’t you listening? That’s what Iverson _wants_ us to do!”

“No, I mean… What if we found Lance on our own? And we tracked him down without the Garrison? I need to talk to Allura. My parents might be alive!”

Keith perked up at the new argument.

“And if we work with the Garrison, they’ll definitely cut us out of the loop as soon as we find them. They’re already trying to cover up the fact that an _alien spaceship_ crash-landed on earth. I’m with Hunk.”

The two boys turned toward Katie, who was making a show of mulling it over.

“If we do this, we’ll definitely be criminals…”

Keith held his breath. He knew Katie wasn’t done speaking from the glint in her eye, and he wasn't disappointed.

“But I’ve always wanted to be an outlaw! Grab your laptop, Hunk! It’s time to track down Asshole McClain.”

***

“Lance! Is that--”

“It’s Allura Alleyne. She’s out, I think the Garrison drugged her with something. If I had to guess, it's propofol or etomidate. Here, take her,” Lance said as he shoved the still unconscious body into Shiro’s arms before turning back around to get on his speeder.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“There’s something I need to take care of,” Lance said, and then he was disappearing into the night, only leaving a cloud of Nevada dust behind.

“Fuck,” Shiro muttered as he carried Allura back into the shack bridal style.

He shoved the door closed with his hip and gently lowered Allura onto the couch. She had white hair now, as opposed to the chestnut brown locks that even Shiro had been jealous of, and there was a… cyborg prosthetic in the place of her left leg.

“Aliens,” he breathed out, and then he huffed in annoyance.

Of course Lance would come back, dump the body so to speak, and then run off on his own. He hadn’t even told Shiro what had happened at the wreckage!

After setting off the explosions, Shiro had barely avoided being caught by the Garrison land rovers that converged on his location, but they left as soon as they had arrived, presumably responding to a call made when Lance was spotted.

As Shiro ran with only the dim glow of the moon as his guide, heading back towards the shack, he saw a trail of dust and knew Lance was on his way back, too. Whatever had gone down at the crash site, it had gone down fast.

And now Shiro knew Lance had not only illegally entered a government-controlled zone, but he had apparently kidnapped _Allura,_ who as far as the entire planet knew, was dead. And the reason the entire planet thought _Shiro_ was dead was because he had known Allura and the rest of the Kerberos crew were abducted by aliens.

It was late, though. And as exciting as all of the night’s events had been, Shiro needed sleep. Seeing as Allura probably wouldn't be waking up any time soon, Shiro allowed himself to relax in the armchair across from the couch that Allura was draped over, eventually sinking into a restless dream.

***

“Why wouldn't you just single modulate it?”

“What do you mean? Single modulation is a waste of time. You might as well not even modulate it at all!”

“Well, I think--”

“Coffee's here,” Keith interrupted, kicking their dorm room door shut.

“Oh, thank God,” Hunk said, standing abruptly and shoving past Katie to get one of the three steaming mugs that Keith had swiped from the teacher’s lounge. One of the benefits of being up at the crack of dawn was that none of the teachers were up yet.

“Any progress?”

“Oh yeah,” Katie said excitedly, grabbing her own coffee mug and settling down next to Hunk. They were all gradually becoming more comfortable around each other, which was nice. “Hunk made a program that’s evaluating all of Lance’s submitted school work and internet searches. Hopefully, we’ll find information that gives us a hint about his location or even an IP address that isn’t on school grounds.”

“Isn’t that a bit… invasive?”

“I don’t really think that’s our main concern, do you?” Hunk said, leaning over to his open laptop and typing in a few extra commands.

“Yeah, plus, it’s like getting to know a kid I’ve never met! Did you know Lance was into guy--”

“Ew, Katie, _shut up!_ I _so_ don’t want to know that,” Keith screeched, tossing the nearest object he could find -- a tissue box -- at his friend’s head. He tried to will the flush on his cheeks away.

“How long did you say this was gonna take, Hunk?”

The communications officer mulled it over for a bit, clacking on the keyboard some more with one hand while taking another swig of coffee.

“Well, seeing as my program is only pulling data that I have to then manually sort through, there’s no telling. We might have to miss first period, or… we could be done right now!”

“Whoa! Let me see,” Katie said, scooting even closer to Hunk than she already was and sticking her entire face in the monitor.

“It’s an internet search for ‘nearby pharmacies’ made from a deregistered Garrison laptop a few months ago. The coordinates look like they’re in the middle of the desert, just north of here. It can’t be more than a couple of hours away!”

Keith and Katie both scrambled to get changed (Hunk didn’t have a change of clothes since he had spent the night in their dorm), and then they were bursting out of the door.

“How are we going to get to Lance?” Katie hissed as they rounded a few corners, using the same route that Katie and Keith usually used to sneak out at night. “In case you’ve forgotten, none of us have clearance to take a vehicle off campus.”

“Luckily for us,” Keith said as the trio burst out of the dorm building and into Nevada's warm morning air, “I have some experience when it comes to hijacking Garrison vehicles.”

“Right. _Lucky us,_ ” Hunk groused, and Keith didn’t hold back his chuckle.

***

Shiro woke up with the sun, rubbing at his eyes blearily. His back was a bit sore, probably because he had fallen asleep in the living room for some reason. He stood and shuffled towards the kitchen to take his BMD meds, some mixture of catabolic steroids that Lance had picked up from the drug store.

As he swallowed down the last of his pills, Shiro suddenly felt as if he were forgetting something important. It wasn’t unusual for Lance to not be home in the mornings -- he liked to slip away when Shiro was too groggy to try and follow him. That wasn’t it.

 _Last night._ Last night, something important had happened. And suddenly it all came back to Shiro.

His old friend was here, in his living room, very much alive and… starting to wake up on his couch.

“Allura?” he asked, hovering nearby but leaving some space for the pilot.

Allura blinked slowly, cracking her eyes open and taking in her surroundings. At least she had been around to Shiro’s shack before, so the familiarity might help ease any shock.

“Takashi?” she asked, eyes finally zeroing in on Shiro’s face. He sighed in relief.

“God, am I glad to see you, Allura. The Garrison told us you were dead.”

The pilot frowned, then coughed. Probably a dry throat, not uncommon thanks to the dry heat of the Nevada desert.

“That makes sense, I suppose. But… after I crashed, I was in Garrison custody. How am I here now?”

Shiro chuckled, moving over to the kitchen to get a glass of water for Allura. He wondered how she’d stayed alive in space for so long, but he had to take this one thing at a time.

“You have your favorite student to thank for that.”

Allura’s eyes widened comically and she nearly dropped her newly acquired glass of water.

 _“Lance?_ Is he here? Is he okay? I _must_ see him,” she said, standing abruptly on wobbly legs (well, one was wobbly -- the other was robotic, so Shiro didn’t know if it could be accurately described as wobbly). 

“Hey, slow your roll, Allura. He’s fine. Probably. But he’s not around, it’s just us.”

The pilot quickly deflated, relaxing back onto the couch and finally taking a large gulp from her glass of water. She looked tense.

“You look tense.”

“Yes, it might have something to do with the impending alien invasion.”

Shiro made an embarrassing squeaking noise that he quickly covered with a very manly cough. Very manly.

“Um… Well, I knew about the aliens already. Hacked into the classified Garrison files, actually,” he clarified, rubbing the back of his neck bashfully. “But, an invasion? Now? How do you know? What happened out there, Allura?”

“I’ve got a lot to explain, don’t I?” she said sadly, wrapping her knuckles against her metallic leg. It must have been a nervous tick she’d developed during her… months in alien captivity. _Fuck._

“Look, it’s a long story, and all that matters right now is that the aliens are coming to earth for a weapon. A weapon called Voltron.”

Shiro pursed his lips in thought, taking a seat beside Allura on the couch. He wondered if this mysterious weapon had something to do with Lance’s weird cave paintings.

“Voltron wouldn’t happen to be a giant mechanical man, would it?”

“That’s-- I suppose I don’t know,” she said quietly, and before Shiro could elaborate any further there was a knock on the front door. _Lance never knocked._

“Get behind me. I don’t know who’s at the door.”

“I can handle myself,” Allura growled, and before Shiro could tell what was happening she was striding purposefully towards the front door and throwing it open.

The three teenagers on their doorstep had apparently not been expecting such an immediate response and toppled forward, ending up in an unruly pile in the doorway.

But Shiro immediately recognized the raven-haired boy on top of the pile who was being forcefully shoved to the side by a smaller girl with glasses. _Keith Kogane_ scrambled to his feet, and instead of looking at Allura, his eyes were somehow drawn past her, locking with Shiro’s own.

There was a whirlwind of emotions in those eyes, too many going by too quickly. But Keith was here, and he hadn’t seen Keith in months. Because Keith thought he was dead.

_“Shiro?”_

***

Keith probably should’ve been angry. Hell, he’d _seen_ the therapist at his psych eval to get into the Garrison writing ‘prone to anger’ on his little notepad after asking Keith too many dumbass questions.

 _Shiro had lied to him._ Shiro was standing right in front of him (actually, he was strategically using Allura, _who was also supposed to be dead,_ as a human shield) looking very much alive and healthy.

Luckily for Shiro, and probably everyone else in this stupid desert shack, Keith was surprising even himself by not immediately resorting to violence to deal with his overwhelming emotions. _Character development._

“You’re looking particularly spry for a corpse, Shiro.”

The man in question gulped as Allura stepped aside, allowing the cadets who had just finished straightening themselves out to step fully into the _charming_ little shack.

“Uh… you look good… too?” Shiro tried, looking very uncertain. He was probably expecting Keith to lash out, so Keith did his best to remain calm just to spite him.

“Thanks.”

“Alright. This is good news, right? We’re two-for-two when it comes to dead people coming back from the dead! My moms are probably fine,” Hunk rambled, turning to look at Allura expectantly.

“Yeah-- yes. The last time I saw Manaia and Charlotte, they were alive.”

Keith tuned out whatever conversation Hunk and Katie were having with Allura about the Kerberos mission, following Shiro into what was apparently a small bedroom.

“Alright, before you say anything, please let me explain.”

Keith gave Shiro a pointed look (the silent treatment always got him on the defensive), and Shiro ran a hand nervously through his overgrown hair before beginning.

“So Allura and the Kerberos crew were abducted by aliens--”

“I know that Shiro, I was at the crash last night.”

“ _What?_ Did you see Lance there?”

“Funny story, actually. He left us behind to get nabbed by the Garrison. That’s why we’re here. Iverson was going to make us track Lance down tonight, so we decided to do it on our own instead.”

Shiro looked troubled by this development, and Keith realized why he wasn’t feeling angry at his surrogate brother. It was because all of his anger was already allocated to one person. Lance McClain.

“Okay, well you should know that I found out about the aliens a few months before I… died,” Shiro said, grimacing at the word. Keith began asking a question, but Shiro spoke again. “Yes, Adam knew. It was for your safety, Keith. The Garrison found out what I was doing and threatened you. Threatened my _family._ So Lance helped m--”

“That’s fucking it, Shiro. When Lance gets back I’m going to fucking throttle him.”

Shiro grimaced again, looking kind of guilty but also deciding not to speak up for Lance. Keith really didn’t like the fact that Shiro and Lance had been living in a cabin on their own for so many months. He didn’t like the fact that Shiro apparently trusted Lance more than Keith.

“Let’s just go rejoin the others.”

They made their way back into the living room, where Hunk and Katie had made themselves comfortable on the couch while Allura sat in a chair across from them. Apparently they had moved on from discussing Hunk’s missing parents.

“No offense, Hunk, but if you found our location with such a simple algorithm, I doubt we have much time before the Garrison is knocking on our door.”

“None taken. It's probably more offensive to Lance. He didn’t cover his digital footprints very well.”

“That’s a problem we both seem to share,” Shiro cut in, sitting on the only other available chair. Keith sighed and squeezed onto the couch next to Katie.

“Speaking of _Lance,_ where the fuck is he?”

“I haven’t seen him since he came home with Allura last night, but he never stays out for more than a day. He’ll be back.”

“Good,” Katie said, maneuvering her legs so that they laid across Keith’s lap. “Until then, let’s talk Voltron.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wheerrree did Lance go could he possibly be running away from all of his problems? Who knows I just couldn't say *cough*yes*cough*
> 
> This is getting kind of long... it's supposed to end with the paladins in space with Coran Coran the Gorgeous Man but that's taking forever!! Depending on what happens next chapter, I might have to up the chapter count to 5 oopsies 😅
> 
> Also I'm lowkey writing five other fics right now LMAOOO anyways luv you all bye!


	4. Another Sour Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm here's this, also I'm leaving town for a bit so IDK how soon I'll be able to update again? (lowkey I'll probably keep writing on my phone lmao). Anyways, lots of love k bye

“Hunk, don’t be mad--”

“Not a solid opening, but continue,” Hunk said, leaning back to rub at his eyes. It had been a busy morning for all of them.

“Well, I was looking through your stuff for some food, and I found your diary--”

“It’s a notebook! And check it out, I’m very calm. Definitely not using all of my willpower to prevent myself from strangling you.”

“...Cool?”

“Did you find something, Pidge?” Shiro prompted, and Katie finally looked away from Hunk’s menacingly large hands that he’d threatened to strangle her with.

“Right, yes. I noticed that the repeating series of numbers the aliens are searching for looks a lot like a fraunhofer line.”

“Which element’s emission spectrum was it?” Allura asked, and Keith had nearly forgotten that Allura had been their physics instructor. Of course she would know about these things.

“That’s just it. It doesn’t correspond with any element that exists on earth. _But,_ ” Katie added, looking very pleased with herself, “I can rig up a machine to locate it, kinda like a Voltron Geiger Counter.”

“Aw, Katie, I always knew you were the brains of the group!”

“Shut up,” Katie said, proceeding to pull out a graph of the wavelength she had nabbed from Hunk’s diary. Everyone looked at it, but for some reason, it was Shiro’s eyes that widened in recognition.

“Wait a second,” he mumbled, snatching the graph and leaving, going back down the hall to the bedrooms. Whatever he was doing in there was taking a long time, so as a group, Hunk, Katie, Allura, and Keith all stood to follow him.

Shiro wasn’t in the same bedroom that he and Keith had used to have their brief discussion earlier. Keith could hear him rummaging around somewhere farther down the hall, and when they all filed in one by one into the cramped room, they were all taken aback by the mess.

Well, Keith supposed it qualified as an _organized_ mess, at least. Pictures were taped all over the walls, post-it notes covered in illegible chicken scratch were plastered on the ceiling, and red string was attaching everything. It looked like a classic conspiracy theorists’ corkboard except ten times larger. The room itself was significantly smaller than Shiro’s, and it only had a small mattress in the corner as opposed to an actual bed. No windows.

“Shiro, what the hell is this?”

“Oh,” he said, pausing in his frantic sorting of photos. “This is, uh, Lance’s room. I’m looking for a photo that he showed me a while ago.”

 _“Right…”_ Katie said, dragging out the ‘i’ sound.

Keith hadn’t realized that Lance had gone so far off the deep end. There were pictures of random rock carvings, drawings of people with weird markings on their cheeks. There was a spot on the floorboards near the bed that had clearly been stabbed several times by a knife. As Keith crouched down to take a closer look, the floorboard creaked.

He gave it an exploratory wiggle and found that it was loose, so he cautiously pried it up. The rest of the group was still preoccupied with the hundreds of papers stuck to the walls. In the small compartment beneath the floorboard, Keith found a dead cellphone and two photographs.

One of the photos was significantly older than the other. It was of a cute little baby, smiling like an idiot, with two marks on his cheeks that looked like they were glowing. Maybe glow-in-the-dark face paint. And the people who were presumably the child’s parents were barely in the shot, their faces cut off by the camera. The back of the image said ‘Always remember your home, Lance.’ Keith suddenly felt like he shouldn’t be looking at the thing.

The other picture he found was just of some random outcropping of boulders. Judging by the color of the rocks and the sky, he’d say the picture was taken right here in Nebraska. Keith pocketed the picture of Lance as a baby and replaced the floorboard.

“Shiro, is this what you were looking for?”

The man in question glanced up, and when he saw what Keith was holding he grinned.

“That’s the one. Check this out.”

He held up the graph Katie had produced of the mystery Voltron element, and the line matched the silhouette of the rock formation exactly.

“Holy shit,” Hunk breathed out.

“Look, there’s coordinates written on the back!” Katie said excitedly. “I just need to grab a few things for the Voltron detector, and then we can go check it out.”

Katie rushed out of Lance’s room and came back just as quickly with several kitchen appliances and electronics bundled in her arms.

“I can build it in the car! Let’s go,” she said, and Allura made a face like she’d swallowed a bug.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Lance?”

“Fuck him,” Keith growled, leading the procession back to their stolen Garrison land rover. He didn’t miss what Shiro said to Allura as they all piled into the car, Keith in the driver’s seat.

“I wouldn’t worry about him, Allura. I have a feeling we’re going to find him out there already.”

***

Was Lance running away from his problems again? Yes, yes he was.

But in his own defense, Lance understood the exact position he was in. Those stupid Garrison cadets from last night had recognized him.

While at the time leaving them behind seemed like a perfectly fine plan of action, Lance realized that either the kids were going to rat him out to the Garrison or they were just going to go ahead and find Lance on their own.

He’d backed himself into a corner with this one. Really, he should’ve stayed at the house. He hadn’t even _warned_ Shiro that they were compromised, that he should expect Iverson to come a-knockin’. And now, if he ever went back to the shack, he’d probably have at bare minimum four angry people waiting for him.

He wondered if Allura harbored any ill will towards him. When she had left to go to Kerberos, they hadn’t been on the best terms. Then again, they used to butt heads fairly often, so he supposed it wasn’t an unusual state of affairs.

Anyways, this wasn’t a typical Lance fuck-up. A typical one was easily smoothed over by some sweet talking and his best smile.

This particular fuck-up had a lot riding on it and could not be solved by pandering. While he was irrevocably fucked in the social department, he might still have to suck it up and go back. He _needed_ to talk to Allura. This was about a lot more than his possibly alien heritage. Allura could know about the caves, the strange energy that was always telling Lance where to go.

In fact, even though he hadn’t necessarily planned to take off last night, he’d instinctively driven right back out into the desert. Not towards the city, not towards the Garrison, not towards the man-made lake that he occasionally took a dip in.

Lance couldn’t even remember what he’d done last night, but he guessed he looked like some madman wandering around in a trance, brushing his fingers across the marred surfaces of rocks that he had no business knowing as well as he did.

It was morning now, and the air was hot and clung to his skin. He had sand in his shoes. He pulled his old knife out of its sheath and stared at his reflection in its shiny exterior. The marks were finally gone again.

Lance didn’t really know what to do now. He’d have to go somewhere, and soon. He needed food and water and probably a recharge for his desert speeder. But the immature part of him, the most _human_ part of him, refused to go back to the shack.

He could go into town. He’d been meaning to buy some new parts to fix up the rain-recycling system back at… _the shack._ Shiro’s secret shack. Where Allura was, his best hope at finding anything out about his past. Where those dumbass Garrison cadets were going to lead Iverson and his goons.

Lance sighed, standing up from the position in which he’d apparently slept last night, slumped against a cave wall. His back cracked loudly as he uncurled himself, and as he was about to push his speeder back into the sun's warm embrace, he heard the unmistakable buzzing of a land rover.

“Fuck.”

He hadn’t brought anything with him that could be tracked, so he was hoping the land rover was just passing by.

Those hopes were quashed as he heard the rover draw nearer and cut its engines. It had parked just to the left of the cave mouth that Lance was in, so his speeder was hopefully out of sight.

“Yeah, this is it,” he heard a familiar voice faintly saying. Lance exhaled in relief -- it was just Shiro.

 _“Finally,”_ a particularly annoying thorn in Lance’s side answered.

“Fuck,” he said once again, but this time he meant it.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t hide in this cave forever. If they didn’t find him, it would be one thing. If they _did_ find him, it would just be plain awkward. Looks like Lance needed to cut his losses and face his problems like a man.

“Or maybe like an alien,” he murmured to himself as he stepped stiffly out of the cave. The smaller kid, Pidge if he remembered correctly, practically shit themself, scrambling to hide behind the big cadet, the Garretts’ kid.

Shiro grinned and jabbed his elbow into Allura’s ribs, and Allura stomped on Shiro’s foot in return, causing him to open his mouth silently in pain. _How are they adults?_ On the other hand, those were some promising reactions. No hatred or yelling yet.

The final member of the party, Keith Kogane, had frozen when he spotted Lance. Apparently, the initial shock had worn off, though, because now he was storming towards Lance with clenched fists and fire burning in his eyes.

“Fuck.”

_Third time’s the charm._

***

Of course Shiro hadn’t been surprised that Lance McClain was randomly spending the night in a cave that was part of a rock formation that he had previously photographed for some reason.

And of course Shiro hadn’t been surprised that said photograph had been labeled with exact coordinates and stashed under the floorboards in Lance’s room, a room that looked like several conspiracy theorists had an orgy in it.

Once again, Keith was reminded of his anger. As he stomped towards the former top pilot in the entire Garrison (he’d seen the simulator scores), he had murder on the mind.

“Hey, Keith, maybe you should--” Shiro tried from wherever he was standing behind Keith, but his voice cut off as Keith grabbed Lance by the lapels of his dumb jacket and shoved him back into the cave. _A little privacy never hurt anybody._

“Lance.”

“Uh, hey--”

“Shut up,” Keith snarled. “Last night, you fucked me and my friends over. And Shiro said you were the one who faked his death.”

“Well--”

Keith slammed Lance against the wall again. For whatever reason, Lance wasn’t fighting back. He was just taking it with an infuriatingly blank face, and that just made Keith even angrier. They were uncomfortably close now, and Keith could see every detail of Lance’s face, his deep blue eyes, his flawless skin, a few cute freckles. His lips were chapped from the desert heat. _Nope, I’m angry._

“You’re a fucking asshole!” Keith yelled, releasing one of the lapels of Lance’s jacket to wind back, preparing to punch Lance is his dumb nose. Maybe it’d look better a bit crooked.

Unfortunately, someone caught his wrist. And that someone was unsurprisingly Shiro.

“Keith, c’mon. We’re all friends right now, okay?”

“I was gonna kill him, but since he’s my _friend_ now, I guess I’ll just have to settle for some polite maiming,” he growled, grabbing for the knife strapped to Lance’s back with his free hand.

Apparently, that had been the wrong move (or the right one, depending on how you look at it -- he had finally gotten a rise out of Lance), because as soon as his fingers wrapped around the hilt of the dagger, Lance was a blur, jabbing Keith in the neck and swiping his legs out from under him, causing Keith to topple backward into Shiro.

He coughed a few times, trying to regain his breath. He was about to get up and give Lance some of his own medicine when Shiro’s arms tightened around him, trapping him in place.

“I don’t like pulling the seniority card, but I don’t want to see any more fighting, you two. Can’t you be adults about this?”

“Oh come on, Shiro, you know--”

“Hey,” Keith said as he stood up and helped Shiro to his feet. “Do you think you know Shiro better than me? He _raised_ me! You’re just some Garrison dropout who doesn’t even--”

“Keith! What did I _just_ say?”

“It’s fine, Shiro,” Lance said, and for some reason, Keith didn’t feel very satisfied as he watched Lance’s retreating back. Shiro put a hand on his shoulder and released one of his patented tired dad sighs, a sound Keith would certainly never admit to missing.

“Hey, we’ve got something!”

Keith’s eyes met Shiro’s, and then they were leaving the cave where Lance had apparently spent the night and tracking the voice of Katie, who had yelled at them from a different cave. Allura and Lance had been talking near the land rover and were also on their way to join them.

“What is it?”

“Look at the readings we're getting in here! And all of these carvings, they’re just like the pictures from Lance’s room,” Hunk murmured.

Keith saw Lance’s head whip around to locate Shiro, who he proceeded to glare at. Shiro smiled back sheepishly and shrugged. Keith crossed his arms over his chest -- something about seeing Lance and Shiro interact like that, like old friends, made him ache. He used to have that with Shiro, before he had (apparently not) died.

He decided to distract himself by taking a closer look at the carvings on the walls in the cave. There had been carvings in the other cave, too, but he had been… distracted.

Hunk was right, though. There were drawings of what might have been a robotic cat, and there was a larger depiction of what he assumed was Voltron, the mechanical man. He let his fingers brush over the markings as he wondered how long ago they were carved, but they suddenly started glowing a brilliant blue.

“They’ve never done that before,” Lance said in awe, and Keith felt smug knowing that he had been the one to do something useful for once.

Well, the exact usefulness of whatever he had just done was debatable, because a few seconds after the symbols started glowing the cave began to rumble.

And then they were plummeting into the yawning chasm of darkness that had appeared as the ground literally fell apart beneath their feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, it got longer. Imagine that. My new chapter estimate is 6 oooops  
> Unrelated note (well, sort of related), but this is the first time all of my chapters have actually been around the same length! I think they're all hovering around 2.5k words, ish. #consistency


	5. Another Adventure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooo this one was rough to churn out. Might extend the chapter count again, we'll see.

Lance landed in a cold body of water with a splash. Emphasis on the word _cold._ After over a year of nothing but desert, the frigid water was quite the shock to his system.

It was too dark wherever they were for him to be able to properly see anything, but he could hear splashing all around him -- hopefully, it was just his companions and not some freaky cave monster they had awoken from a centuries long slumber. It would be just Lance’s luck.

“Shiro? Lance?”

That was Allura. As Lance’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and he paddled to what was hopefully solid land, several other people began shouting for their friends, playing a perverted game of Marco Polo. Lance paid them no mind. His sole focus was currently on getting out of the freezing water so he could actually _think_ again.

“Hey, there’s something glowing in the water!” a higher-pitched voice called out. Pidge, by the sound of it.

Lance whipped his head around, looking for whatever glowing thing Pidge was talking about. Maybe it was more carvings, or the robot lion, or even Voltron itself.

Belatedly, Lance realized she must have been talking about the marks on his cheeks. _Right. Cold. Shock. Distracted._ Lance took a moment to just tread water, closing his eyes and ignoring the impenetrable darkness he was surrounded by, ignoring the ripples on the surface of the previously undisturbed underground reservoir. _Deep breaths._

“Huh. It’s gone now.”

“Let’s just get out of here. Anyone find shallow water yet?”

“Over here!”

Lance desperately swam towards the voice, probably Hunk. It seemed like hours but could only have been a few seconds, and then he was finally standing again, trying to catch his breath. He’d always been a fan of water in the past, but something about this place, maybe the darkness, maybe his present company, was really ruining this experience for him.

“Let’s get out of here. Mullet must have set off some kind of trap.”

“I can _assure_ you that this was not my fault! You’re the asshole who got us--”

“Shut it, you two!” Shiro said, cutting in before they came to blows. Lance supposed he didn’t mind the intervention all that much. He was currently a shivering mess. “I think there’s something up ahead.”

“How do you know? It’s pitch black in here.”

“I don’t know… I just feel it.”

Now that Shiro mentioned it, Lance could feel it too. As he finally waded all the way out of the cursed (or blessed, the fall certainly would’ve killed them all if there hadn’t been water below) underground pool, he felt a familiar tugging deep inside himself.

It was the same energy that drew him out into the desert night after night, but ten times stronger. It was thrumming through his veins, reaching out to him. It was _alive._ Lance had to take another moment to focus on disguising the marks on his cheeks before he followed the procession of various Garrison cadets and teachers.

They all entered a larger chamber, and sitting right in the middle was the most magnificent thing Lance had ever laid eyes on. It felt like every part of his life, from the time after Allura found him all alone to the moments from his past that he could hardly remember, had been leading to this. Leading him here.

It was just like the cave drawings, if not a bit more impressive. A sleek blue and white exterior, robotic appendages, a _face._ It was standing proudly upright and entirely surrounded by some kind of force field. Somehow, after sitting down here for what must’ve been thousands of years, it still had enough power to generate a protective barrier.

Lance glanced over at Keith, who, like the rest of their companions, was staring slack-jawed at the giant mechanical beast. He was kind of annoyed that it had been Keith to unlock the secrets of a cave that Lance had spent so much of his time hovering around, but at the same time, he found that he was strangely glad for Keith Kogane of all people to be with him. Allura and Shiro were a given in the long run, but Lance hadn’t been expecting these three cadets to come along.

Unfortunately, that same energy that was coursing through his body was somehow inexplicably connecting him to Keith. And to Allura. And to Pidge and Hunk and Shiro. They were all connected. They all had the same energy flowing through them.

***

Keith had doubted things all of his life. Doubted whether he was deserving of his family’s unconditional love, whether Shiro really saw anything in him, doubting his place at the Galaxy Garrison.

But he’d learned to trust his senses, and he _knew_ he had seen Lance’s cheeks glowing. Just like they had been in the baby picture he had found stashed in the floor of the shack. Lance’s cheeks had been _glowing,_ like he was some sort of otherworldly being. He could very well be one, for all Keith knew.

But the water was cold, and the room was dark, and the faint blue glow quickly melted back into the sea of blackness. And Keith decided that he would save that particular mystery for a different time, when he wasn’t flailing around in some ancient pool of ice water.

He’d been grateful for Hunk’s guidance, perplexed when he felt the energy Shiro was talking about. Because he _could_ feel it, and it wasn’t just some random energy. It felt like something alive, something that he had known his entire life. Like it was trying to communicate with him.

And then they were in a big room and there was a giant robot sitting right in front of him, like it had been waiting for him to show up. Like it _missed_ him, which was insane because it was a _robot._

Lance is the first to step forward and approach the robot, hovering about a foot away from the force field its surrounded by, the blue light casting shadows on his face. He looks beautiful like that, all of the anger gone. Just wonder. Awe.

“How are we gonna get through this?”

Keith approached, coming to a stop by Lance’s side. He felt like the lion was watching his every move, like it was waiting for him to do something. So he does.

“Maybe you just have to knock.”

He rapped his knuckles against the force field and it dissipated, a shower of blue dispersing all around them. And then Keith could see something in his mind, _five_ lions combining to form a giant man. To form Voltron.

“Woah… did everyone just see that?”

“Voltron is a giant man-robot! This is so awesome!” Katie practically yelled, her voice bouncing around in the underground room.

“And this thing is only one part of it! I wonder where the rest of them are…” Allura said, her voice colored with childish wonderment.

“Then this is what we’re looking for.”

Keith risked another glance over at Lance, who had remained mysteriously quiet. He looked troubled now, like the vision of Voltron had caused him physical pain. Keith was considering asking him if he was alright when Lance’s brilliant blue eyes flashed up to meet his, and Keith decided there was no way he was going to talk feelings with Lance McClain right now.

Luckily, the lion moved and interrupted the intense staring contest he had accidentally engaged Lance in. Keith knew he should probably have been afraid, but it still felt like the lion-robot-whatever thing was talking to him.

Nothing was waiting for him back at the Garrison except expulsion and possibly actual jail time. He didn’t have much to lose by getting in a random robot.

Having made his decision, he walked into the lion’s open jaws, ignoring the sounds of protest from his friends. He heard light footsteps behind him, ones he recognized as Lance’s. He smiled.

The interior of the lion thing was larger than Keith expected. Actually, it looked kind of familiar, like a high-tech version of a Garrison fighter jet. It wasn't just a robot. It was a _warship._

The buzzing in the back of his head urged him forward, and even as the rest of his friends filed into the cockpit, Keith took a seat in what he assumed was the pilot’s chair.

“Uh, guys, what should--”

Keith got cut off when the seat suddenly zipped forward and a console lit up in front of him.

“Holy shit, Keith! You activated the alien warship,” Katie said, coming up to stand behind his right shoulder and peer closer at the display.

Hunk was on his left, and he could barely see Allura in his peripheral vision. That meant that Lance and Shiro were somewhere behind them. Suddenly, the buzzing in the back of his mind became more clear, more like an actual _voice_ trying to tell him something.

“Did-- did anyone else hear that?”

“No, dude, we’re all pretty much silent in awe,” Hunk responded, squinting at Keith like he was crazy.

He decided to ignore Shiro’s snickering from behind him -- for a guy who Keith had thought was dead for the past few months, he sure burrowed his way right back into Keith’s good graces pretty damn quick.

“I think it’s talking to me. The ship, I mean.”

There’s an exasperated huff, maybe from Allura. Lance had been oddly silent for this entire ordeal. But he can’t think about that right now. He needs to focus.

Keith listens. He pushes the buttons that the faint voice in his head guides him toward, and then the entire ship is moving, standing up on all fours and releasing a deafening roar that is definitely _not_ just in Keith’s head.

He grinned even as all of his companions screamed, grabbing onto the controls like he had been flying weird feline warships his entire life.

He burst through the cave wall into the open sky over the Nevada desert. The ship was still talking to him, like it was teaching him how to fly. It did a few flips, zigzagging through the air and Keith laughed incredulously as the ship piloted itself.

He almost forgot he had a bunch of screaming passengers behind him until Allura was yelling at him in her perfectly clipped British accent.

“Keith, you’re the worst pilot! Ever!”

“That’s no way to speak to your students, Ms. Alleyne,” he replied giddily, feeling the lion’s voice in his mind as it landed on the rocky desert ground.

As it turned out, the mechanical limbs could move, and even Keith was feeling a little worse for wear as they bounded across the landscape.

“This is awesome!”

“If you think me puking all over you is awesome, then I completely agree,” Katie groaned, and Keith glanced over to see that his friend was a worrying shade of green.

“I’m not controlling it. It’s like it’s on autopilot!”

Just as he finished that sentence, the lion took a mighty leap off of the ground, going straight up. And projecting an image into his mind of another alien spaceship. Though Keith got the feeling this new one wasn’t friendly.

“Uh, Keith, buddy, where are we going?” Hunk asked, looking distinctly unhappy.

“The ship’s saying something about an enemy ship. I think we’re supposed to stop it?”

“Presumably those are the aliens that are hunting for this, right? For Voltron? Maybe we can just hand the ship over and--”

“No!” Allura interrupted Shiro’s nervous ramble with a rather decisive negatory. “You don't understand. These monsters spread like a plague throughout the galaxy, destroying everything in their path. There’s no bargaining with them. They won't stop until everything is dead.”

An awkward silence reigned in the cockpit even as they got higher and higher in earth’s atmosphere. Keith could feel the slight shift, the switch from real gravity to artificial gravity, as they broke into _space._

Outer fucking space. And right in front of them, just like the lion had told him, was a giant purple warship. It didn’t look anything like the alien warship Keith was piloting, but it _did_ appear to have some impressive gunning attachments.

The two ships floated silently above Keith’s home, a green and blue sphere far below. Keith wanted to wait for the enemy to make the first move, but then he heard a weak ‘no’ from behind him. A voice he hadn’t heard in a while.

“What’s going on back there?”

“I don’t know,” Allura responded, crouching down and out of Keith’s periphery vision. “It’s Lance. He seems to have gone catatonic.”

“Do you thi-- _Fuck!”_

The purple ship opened fire, releasing several magenta lasers that sliced through the black space around them. Keith jerked the controls, barely dodging the onslaught.

***

Lance hadn’t liked any of it. He hadn’t liked the glowing on the cave walls, the secret chamber, the giant alien warship that was oddly familiar to him. He was having less trouble believing Shiro’s theory that he might be an alien when all of this alien stuff seemed to stir up long-forgotten emotions in him.

He didn’t like the force field, or the fact that it lowered for Keith. He didn’t like Keith going in by himself, though, so Lance had followed him. He _definitely_ hadn’t liked bouncing through the goddamn desert.

He’d disliked flying even more, cutting through the crisp Nevada morning air in a hulking metal cat. But now he was in _space,_ and he just _knew_ it wasn’t the first time he had been here.

He would’ve been embarrassed that he crumpled to the ground like that, clutching at his head like he had the worst migraine in the history of migraines, if any of his higher mental functions were operational.

Something in him was rebelling, even as the weird energy from the ship was attempting to invade his mind. He wasn’t supposed to be in space again. _Again._

He’d been in space before. But he was supposed to remain on earth, he wasn’t supposed to be _here_ with these random people. His head hurt, he could tell the marks on his cheeks were visible, glowing and tickling his skin.

There were voices in the cockpit, and the ship was shaking, jerking around as if in motion. Like it was fighting. And Lance knew what that felt like too.

His eyes were squeezed shut and his ears were ringing, and he could see other people in his mind’s eye. Other people with the same marks that scarred Lance’s cheeks. People running through fields of beautiful pink flowers, the waves that he remembered, the family that he had forgotten.

He was _there,_ with them. Four women and two men and two children who couldn’t have been older than three. He could tell he belonged with them, that he must have been one of those children. He was supposed to be sharing meals with them, walking along the beach. The rain hurt there. It didn’t hurt on earth.

But he wasn’t on earth or whatever strange planet he was having visions of. He was in space, not floating, but moving with purpose. Keith Kogane was piloting an alien warship. Noises started to come back, Pidge and Hunk yelling, two adults whispering in soft, soothing voices. _What were they talking about?_

He felt two pairs of hands on him. Allura Alleyne and Takashi Shirogane. Humans, teachers at the Garrison. He was in a spaceship right now. _God, what is happening to me?_

He batted the hands away, jerking up from where he’d apparently slumped to the floor in the cockpit. There were two pairs of eyes staring at him, worry creating wrinkles where there should’ve been none.

“Lance… are you--”

“Fine, I’m fine,” Lance mumbled, stumbling back to his feet and using the wall for support, refusing any further help from the two people who had been crouching in front of him, presumably to shield him from the others.

“How’re we doing back there?” Keith called as he jerked the controls of the ship, sending them spinning to the right.

“I think he’ll be alright,” Allura said, looking wearily over at Lance, who was still braced against the cockpit wall.

Shiro leaned over and whispered in Lance’s ear before any of the cadets turned around to check on him.

“The marks on your cheeks.”

Lance grumbled, taking a breath and composing himself. The marks faded again.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re being pursued by a hostile alien spacecraft! I can’t even believe how fast this thing is going, we’ve passed Kerberos already and normally-- oh, Lance. Are you alright?”

“Yeah, dude, you were out for like, five minutes,” Hunk added, finally turning away from the front display.

“I’m okay,” he said, not bothering to elaborate any further. Something had appeared in front of them, another vaguely familiar thing that stirred up more unwanted emotions. “Wormhole.”

“What? Are you sure? Why’s it there?” Pidge said, looking curious but also properly worried.

“I think the lion wants to go through it,” Keith said, already gaining speed.

Wormholes meant going far away. Far away from earth, where he was supposed to be. Lance had been searching for _this_ for the entire portion of his life that he could remember. But now that he was about to go through a wormhole, he didn’t know what to think.

From the brief glimpses of the past he’d had, it was _good._ He had a loving family, a peaceful life. But in those memories he had been so young. There was still more of his life missing, more pieces of the puzzle that he needed to find.

And if those pieces had anything to do with his prowess in combat, his gut instinct to _kill,_ he didn’t know if he wanted that. Didn’t know if he’d like what he found when he went through that wormhole.

“Don’t you think we should--”

“Here we go,” Keith _motherfucking_ Kogane yelled, pushing forward on the controls without consulting anyone else onboard.

There was a flash of blue, and then they were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bruh I hope that wasn't too abstract but I'm tired now so take it.
> 
> If you want, I'm accepting Julance prompts over on my [Tumblr](https://crapoftheworldblr.tumblr.com), so pop on over and say hi :)


	6. Another Lifetime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOL so I ended up extending the chapter count. Should be one more chapter that'll tie up some loose ends. More important notes at the end!

Lance had recognized the wormhole, knew what it was for some reason. The turbulence, the fact that they emerged from the wormhole only to find that earth and the purple alien warship were no longer visible -- it was all familiar. It all made sense in some twisted, abstract way.

Lance did his best to ignore Pidge barfing her guts out right in front of him. Hunk reached over to pat her on the back while everyone else stared out the windshield.

“I don’t recognize these stars,” Allura murmured, but the real problem was that Lance _did._

The shapes are all so familiar, and his head was starting to hurt again so he tore his eyes away from the wide expanse of space, choosing instead to look at Keith’s mullet while he spoke.

“The lion wants me to go to that planet. I think… it’s going home.”

Lance could feel it, feel that pull inside of him that he knew wasn’t coming from his own mind. It was the lion’s energy, drawing them toward a lone planet in the starry sky that looked vaguely earth-like, but clearly wasn’t earth.

Lance had no clue what was happening, really, but he _did_ know that for some reason, he really didn’t want to go to that planet. Just as much as the lion wanted to go, he wanted to leave, to go back to earth. Something felt wrong, like he wasn’t meant to be here even though he recognized everything.

He recognized the alien ships that attacked them and the wormhole and the stars and the planet below them. But he had no memories tied to them, just a useless and nagging feeling that maybe he had been here before.

Which shouldn’t be possible because wherever they were, it was a lot farther from earth than any of the Galaxy Garrison missions had ever gone.

Then again, Lance had just rescued Allura from an alien escape pod, they were currently in a sentient warship, and Lance himself had inexplicably crashed on earth in a strange ship that now that he thought of it, was kind of similar to the one he had found Allura in.

As Keith piloted the ship toward the planet, the turbulence returned, causing everyone to huddle together. Shiro and Allura were pressed up against Lance’s shoulders, and he was certain that in another lifetime his cheeks would’ve been bright red.

“Katie, your breath’s killing me,” Keith said, shoving the girl’s face away while he focused on guiding the lion down.

“Are you sure this is the smartest idea? First you take us through a random wormhole, and now you want to land on a random planet?” Pidge replied, slapping Keith’s hand away from her face.

“I mean, the lion _did_ get us away from the _other_ alien ship that was attacking us. That’s good, right?” Hunk asked, not bothering to look away from the planet they were nearing and address his questions to a specific person.

“Look, none of us know where we’re going, but we’re all here together. Let’s just stay calm.”

Allura grabbed Lance’s hand as the lion entered the planet’s atmosphere. As soon as they broke through the clouds, a large white castle became visible. The design and color scheme looked too similar to the escape pod Allura had been in to be a coincidence, but Lance didn’t want to freak anyone out so he kept his mouth shut. _One problem at a time._

“It’s… beautiful,” Keith breathed out, gently lowering the lion down in the courtyard near the castle. The ground was mostly composed of grey, chalkish rocks, but there were patches of green grass as well.

“Keep your guard up,” Allura muttered, squeezing Lance’s hand before dropping it and turning around to where the lion’s ramp was lowering for them to exit. “I’m not losing another crew.”

“Wait! How do you know the atmosphere is breathable? This is _not_ how you’re supposed to…”

Pidge trailed off as Lance and Shiro followed Allura’s lead, stepping out into the perfectly breathable atmosphere of whatever planet they were on. “I guess that works, too.”

***

Keith had seen Lance’s weird little meltdown in the back of the lion when they first flew out into space. And he hadn’t forgotten how Lance’s cheeks had glowed in the cave. And then there was the baby picture, lying wrinkled in his pocket.

There was something to it that Keith didn't understand. And besides the mystery of Lance McClain, who he was still _very_ mad at, he was also in the process of wrapping his head around the fact that Shiro was _alive._ That Allura Alleyne was, too. That they had commandeered an alien spacecraft, evaded a _different_ alien spacecraft, and flown through a magic hole that spat them out on the other side of the universe.

None of it really made sense, and if Keith thought about it too hard he was liable to have a panic attack. Situations like these required a level head, so Keith had ironically decided _not_ to think too much about the circumstances that resulted in his current situation.

As each of his companions filed out of the lion, Keith realized that he couldn’t feel the presence in his head anymore, the energy of the lion ship had faded away at some point.

He bumped shoulders with Katie, staring up at the huge doors to the castle that lay before them. A _castle._ In _space._

Suddenly, Keith sensed movement behind him and turned around to find the lion _moving on its own,_ standing and opening its giant mechanical jaws.

“Oh my god, _it’s going to eat us!”_ Katie yelled in a panic, jumping behind Hunk and clutching at his elbow.

The lion didn’t eat them.

Instead, it roared, a loud and fierce sound that flooded the air and made the hair on the back of Keith’s neck stand on end. At the same time, the large doors to the castle swung inward.

Everyone began approaching the door at once as if this was all somehow choreographed, but Keith glanced back and saw that Lance’s feet hadn’t moved. His eyes were blown wide, something akin to _fear_ etched on his face.

Lance McClain, hotshot pilot and Garrison drop-out, was scared.

Keith was about to double back, maybe do the whole olive branch thing, forgive and forget, but then Shiro was next to Lance instead, whispering something in his ear.

And Keith hated the feeling of jealousy boiling in his gut. He didn’t even know if he was jealous that it was Shiro talking to Lance and not him or if it was about the close relationship the two had developed while Keith had thought Shiro was _dead._

He shoved the jealousy aside, turning away from the two men and walking between Hunk and Katie. Allura was a little bit ahead of them.

At least Keith had an entire space castle to explore. If that couldn’t distract him from his problems, he didn’t know what could.

“Hello?”

No one answered Allura, so they continued into the castle interior. It was dark, which Keith thought was strange considering the clearly electronic ship they’d flown in to get here and how the doors had opened. Theoretically an advanced alien race would have lights. _Maybe they have really good night vision._ Like Mothman.

The castle was all metal inside, smooth silver and cool blue accents. Keith knew that his mother and Acxa would have appreciated the minimalistic design, and that was another thing he was trying to avoid thinking about while his friends called out cautiously, their voices bouncing off of the metallic walls.

Keith could hear two pairs of footsteps behind him. Shiro and Lance. _Whatever._ They walked down some surprisingly normal-sized stairs, down several dark hallways, and then suddenly there was a bright beam of light shining on Allura’s face up ahead. Keith immediately broke into a sprint, fearing the worst.

“Hold for identity scan,” a strange computerized voice said.

Everyone froze in place, unsure what would happen if the computer decided it didn’t like the information it gleaned from whatever scan it was completing.

The beam of light swept over each member of the party, finally pausing on Lance and remaining on his body for a comparatively longer time. Keith held his breath.

“What’s it doing?” Katie whispered, looking ready to bolt.

Abruptly, the beam shut off with a beep. Lance visibly relaxed, and then the dark hallway up ahead was suddenly illuminated with a dim blue glow, the lights coming on one by one.

“Guess we’re going that way,” Shiro said, shrugging as he herded everyone along.

Keith usually had a fairly accurate sense of direction, but he’d gotten distracted by all of the thinking he was trying _not_ to do and now he was a bit worried about the fact that he had no clue where they were. He’d been following Allura’s lead, turning down random hallways and hoping for the best. Keith kind of doubted he’d be able to find his way back out to the courtyard at this point.

“There’s a room up ahead,” Allura commented, walking at a faster pace than before.

She was right. They emerged in a large, open room with several disks arranged in a circle on the ground. There was a pedestal with some kind of display on it that Hunk immediately gravitated toward.

“Where are we?” Keith asked, unsure whether anyone would actually have a solid answer to his question.

“Looks like some kind of control room,” Hunk mumbled, tapping some things on the control panel.

“Hunk, are you sure you should be--”

Two of the circles that had been embedded in the floor rose with a hiss, causing Lance, who had been standing right next to them, to jump back in alarm. There was a fog over the glass, obscuring whatever was inside the tubes.

“I don’t think it was me!” Hunk said, clicking some more buttons on the console in an attempt to reverse whatever had just happened.

Keith peered closer at the tubes, watching as the fog slowly dissipated. He could just barely see something under it, the silhouette of something vaguely humanoid…

“Are those bodies in there? Are they _dead?”_ Katie squeaked, confirming Keith’s suspicions.

Then the glass cover of one of the tubes was sinking into the ground, revealing an alien man in a beautiful blue robe with bright orange facial hair and two blue marks on his cheeks. Just like the one’s Keith had seen on Lance.

The strange man yelled as he took a single step out of the pod and nearly collapsed, Shiro catching him before he hit the ground.

“Is that an alien?” Hunk whispered, and Keith could only stare as the man from the pod squinted up at Shiro and frowned.

“You’re intruders! I can tell by your ears!” the man shouted, grabbing Shiro by the aforementioned ear and putting him in a chokehold that Shiro apparently couldn’t break, which was an incredibly impressive feat. “Now tell me what you’re doing in my castle.”

***

Lance immediately recognized the man when he emerged from the pod, but once again he didn’t know why or how. It was starting to get on his nerves.

Lance had hesitated at the entrance to the castle because he could tell that he shouldn’t be there. Shouldn’t be here. It was as if someone had gone into his mind and planted the idea that he should avoid all things alien.

Kind of difficult to now, though, when he was staring right at one.

“A blue lion brought us here! I don’t know anything else,” Keith said hurriedly, clearly worried for Shiro’s wellbeing.

“The Blue Lion? But what about its paladin? And why are you here? It must’ve been a long time...”

The man’s eyes swept across the room, sliding over everyone like water until his gaze landed on Lance. He could feel his cheeks starting to tingle, as if his marks had a mind of their own and _wanted_ to become visible.

The alien gave him a curious look before releasing Shiro, shoving him away and into Allura. Keith looked like he was ready to blow a fuse.

“We don’t know what you’re talking about, dude,” Pidge said, grabbing onto Keith’s shoulder as if she could also sense that he was on the verge of picking a fight that there was no way he’d win.

If that guy could take Shiro, there was no way Keith stood a chance.

“I’m Prince Coran of Altea. Now if you’d excuse me for a tick, I have some matters to attend to.”

Coran shouldered his way past a speechless Shiro and Allura, then nudged Hunk out of the way and placed his hands over the control panel. It started glowing, an actual screen with symbols appearing. The prince clicked on some buttons, and then the other pod was hissing open.

“So that’s how that works.”

A woman stepped out of the other pod, blinking rapidly as she glanced around. As opposed to the bright orange hair that the prince was sporting, she had short and curly white hair.

Whoever she was, when Lance saw her it felt like a punch to the gut. It wasn’t some vague notion that he might’ve known this woman before, but an actual, _concrete_ realization.

_“Lance, you’re going to be late,” Veronica hissed, peeking at Lance through the doorway._

_“Shut it, I’m almost ready! Don’t you have to go advise the prince or something?” Lance shot back, locking his black chest piece into place and pulling his hood up._

_“Eh. Coran’s busy learning how to fix the Castle with King Wimbleton. And after that, I think some Olkarion ambassadors are supposed to be coming over.”_

_“Well, fortunately for me I’m ready to go. Cover for me?”_

_“Always.”_

Lance blinked again. The same woman, probably a few years older than she had been in whatever memory had just resurfaced in his mind, was standing right in front of him. _Veronica._

He had to say something, had to know if he was insane or this was real and this woman was… his sister? But before he could open his mouth the woman locked eyes with him and her face contorted into a panicked expression, like she knew he was about to say something and she didn’t want that to happen.

Her solution was apparently to launch herself at Keith, tackling him to the ground and pinning his arms above his head.

“Enemy combatants! Prince Coran, what should we do?”

“Veronica, these people don’t pose much of a threat to us. Wait a tick while I figure out how long we’ve-- oh no.”

Veronica slowly released Keith’s arms but remained straddling his chest. Keith grunted some, trying to shove himself up with no success.

“Coran, what is it?”

“This says that we’ve been asleep for… 10,000 decaphoebs!”

There was a beat of silence. A decaphoeb was probably some kind of measurement of time, and Lance felt like it would’ve been something he used to know. But he had no clue how long 10,000 decaphoebs was now. Maybe it was only a few days.

“Okay, we were prepared for this,” Veronica responded evenly, finally standing and stepping away from Keith as she moved between Lance and Coran. “That means Zarkon successfully destroyed Altea and all of our neighboring planets.”

Allura’s eyes widened at the statement, her face paling considerably.

“Zarkon… I was his prisoner. I remember now.”

“Zarkon’s still alive? But it’s been 10,000 decaphoebs!” Coran said, beginning to pace back and forth across the room.

Lance was confused, too. If these two people had been asleep for some long amount of time, there was no way that he knew them. There was no way that Veronica was related to him. On the other hand, there were two many unknown variables for Lance to definitively come to any conclusions.

And Lance could really only think of one explanation for how _fucking familiar_ Veronica elbowing him in the gut just as he was about to say something felt.

“Sorry! I’m super clumsy. You know what, I think I could use your help with something! Why don’t you follow me,” the alien said in a rush, clearly not really meaning a word she said.

Or maybe it was just clear to Lance because she was his sister.

Veronica grabbed his elbow and dragged him out of the room before he could protest, but as he left, he heard one last snatch of conversation.

“Zarkon’s definitely alive. He’s looking for something. A weapon called Voltron.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this fic will wrap up about halfway through the pilot.
> 
> I'm considering making another fic about Keith and Lance's adventure in getting the Red Lion, and I'm also considering doing a sort of prequel about Lance's life on Altea before the events of this fic. Anyone else have any ideas or votes? I'm all ears!!
> 
> Also let it be known that while I was reading the transcript for the actual show so I could write the scene right, Allura apparently said '10,000 years' instead of decaphoebs so I took the liberty of changing that because it seems wrong to me...
> 
> Love y'all. This fic is wrapping up, but some other big things are about to be happening up in my crib. :)))


	7. Another Forgotten Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I used most of the canon explanations but also the reactions from the paladins in the pilot are so weird? Like, none of them question anything LMAO they're all so dumb.
> 
> Also, warning: if you're sensitive to this stuff, there's a panic attack sorta thing (v angsty). Stay safe y'all.
> 
> This is it! Thanks for the great prompt, Shiranai! It got very long but it was a lot of fun to write xx

The door slid shut behind Veronica as she yanked Lance into a supply closet in a different hall.

“Do those other people know you’re Altean?”

“Al-Altean?” Lance echoed, trying out the word.

Veronica sighed in either disappointment or impatience. It was a bit difficult to tell.

“Yeah, Lance. You know, glowy marks on your cheeks? Shapeshifting? Relatively strong compared to other alien species? Altean.”

 _Alien species._ Lance was an alien. Well, he kind of already knew that, but now it was real.

“How do you know my name?” he asked, even though he suspected he already knew the answer.

“I guess Rachel was wrong about the memory-loss wearing off... Unless...?” Veronica muttered to herself, and Lance just stared at her in complete confusion. “How long were you on the planet with the Blue Lion?”

“Uh… my-- my whole life?"

"Okay... this isn't working. How about this -- when is your first memory of that planet from?"

Lance gulped, a feeling of unease settling in his stomach. He remembered cracking his eyes open, seeing a woman with beautiful brown hair staring at him. She had seemed afraid, yet willing to help him all the same. Allura.

"Around two years ago? Longer? Why does that matter?”

“I don’t know what a year is, but you look maybe a couple of decaphoebs older than the last time I saw you. Look, Lance--”

“You never answered my question,” Lance interrupted, glaring at the white-haired woman. “How do you know my name?”

Veronica looked him dead in the eye, meeting his heated gaze easily, and the slight tension felt all too familiar.

“I’m your sister.”

***

“Where’re _they_ going?” Keith grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

Everything seemed to be about _Lance_ lately, and frankly, it was getting annoying. Lance rescues Allura. Lance fakes Shiro’s death. Lance hangs out in random caves in the Nevada desert. Lance’s cheeks glow. Lance gets pulled aside by the crazy alien lady.

At least Keith was the pilot of the Blue Lion. That was something. He’d gotten them here, hadn’t he?

Or, possibly, he’d managed to strand himself and five of his friends in the far reaches of outer space, and they’d never see earth ever again.

Nobody acknowledged his question, but he supposed there were more important issues at hand, anyway.

“Zarkon needs Voltron because it’s the only thing that can defeat him! We need to find it before he does!” Coran said decisively as he exited the room with the sleeping pods.

“So are we just gonna… uh… breeze over the fact that your entire civilization was destroyed?” Katie asked, following the alien prince back into the hall.

Keith was about to follow when he heard some chittering coming from the dormant pod that Coran had been in. He went to take a closer look and was surprised when five mouse-like creatures tumbled out, looking like they had just woken from a nap. They quickly skittered off, and Keith turned to rejoin the group in the hall. It was more alien life than he could process, at the moment.

“Would you rather I dwell on such a fact..." Coran asked, trailing off when he realized he didn't know how to address Katie. "Wait, let me guess! You look like a... Romelle!” he said, snapping his fingers.

“Uh, Pidge. My name’s Pidge. And the big hunky one’s... Hunk, the two models are Shiro and Allura, and Keith’s the broody one in the back,” Katie supplied readily, unphased by the chorus of dissenting opinions that her descriptions were met with.

“Right, so we have no idea what a decaphoeb is,” Hunk cut in, speeding up to walk alongside the prince.

“There should be a ticker on the bridge! We’re almost there.”

***

“I was really hoping you’d have your memory back by now, but I guess I’ll just have to give you the crash course. Do you trust me?”

 _Do I trust her?_ Lance looked at Veronica. He knew her face. He thought back to the recently unearthed memory of him and his… _sister._ He had trusted her in that memory.

“Okay. Yeah, I trust you.”

Veronica smiled and Lance’s cheeks tingled again. He rather liked her smile.

“This planet, it’s not Altea. I’m not sure where we are, actually, but Coran will probably know. Um… wow, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be. We had pretty crazy lives, Lance,” Veronica said, the light smile that had been on her face falling. “We had a family. I don’t know if they made it…”

Lance could almost remember a happy family, but the faces were all fuzzy. They were running around in the waves.

“I remember a beach. And… there were lots of us, weren’t there?”

Another sad smile from Veronica.

“Yeah, there were. You really don’t remember much, huh?”

“I guess not.”

Lance’s head was beginning to ache again, an intense pounding in his skull. There was a pattern there, like every time he learned more about his past, his own body rebelled.

“You were a member of the Blade of Marmora, which was a…”

Veronica’s voice faded away into a dull buzz as Lance’s head exploded in pain. _Not a Blade. I am not a Blade, I can’t--_ Lance bit back a groan, doubling over and clutching at his head.

He was almost certain that Veronica was still there, saying something. It was like whatever had happened back in the Blue Lion all over again, but ten times more intense and with no accompanying memories. He shouldn’t _be_ here, he was supposed to be… he was a… but he wasn’t...

“V-Veronica? What’s happening to me?” he wheezed out, clawing at his own skull.

“I think it… some kind of brain-washing… Rachel didn’t… conditioning,” Veronica’s voice was saying, fading in and out like a radio struggling to tune in to the right channel.

Lance didn’t understand, but his head _hurt._ He couldn’t hold onto a single thought, all of his memories falling through his fingers like the sand from the beach. The world was a muddled, confusing place, but he could hear a voice rising above the chaos. Not Veronica, someone else.

_“Lance McClain, you will comply. You have betrayed Altea. You are the enemy. You will tell me what I want to know, or I will hurt you.”_

The voice repeated the same words, over and over. He could remember things now, could remember the torture and the reason for the torture. He’d _betrayed_ the crown, he was a disgrace, _he needed to leave._

He tried to stand on shaky legs, using the wall for support and breathing harshly through his nose. He needed to go, he was the enemy. _They were going to hurt him._

Lance panicked when he felt hands on him and tried to reach for the knife on his belt, but the grip that the person had on his wrists was too strong for him to break.

“--ance! Lance, look at me!”

Lance’s wide eyes zeroed in on the woman in front of him, someone he knew. _But he didn’t belong here._

“No, you have to let me go! Please! I’m, I-- I betrayed Altea. I’m the enemy and I--”

“Shut up! Look at me! I’m _Veronica,_ I’m your _sister,_ and you are the strongest person I have ever met. Altea was corrupt. They were doing bad things, Lance. They tortured you!” she said desperately, still trying to make eye contact with him. “You were a hero. You were a Blade agent, and-- quiznak, you saved so many lives! You saved _my_ life!”

There were hot tears spilling down Lance’s cheeks. He didn’t remember any of that. He remembered killing people, so many. Nameless and faceless, Alteans and fuzzy, purple people. He remembered the torture. He remembered a family that he had left behind. And he remembered Veronica staying by his side the entire time.

“Veronica…”

“Lance?”

“Thank you.”

***

Pidge had just finished shoveling a platter full of weird alien food into her mouth (which Keith thought was supremely ill-advised) when Lance and the other alien, Veronica, finally rejoined them on the bridge. Hunk, Allura, and Shiro had just established that a decaphoeb was basically the Altean equivalent (that's what the aliens were called, apparently) of an earth year.

He knew that if anyone got hurt by these aliens, he'd feel responsible. He was the one that had flown the literal cat robot with all of them packed inside. Thus, he was on self-appointed guard duty.

Lance’s eyes were red and puffy, like maybe he’d been crying. Veronica’s blue suit looked all wrinkled. Keith was immediately suspicious, but for some reason, everyone else seemed to be taking things in stride.

“Veronica, I’m glad you’re back. We appear to be on the planet Arus and I was wondering--”

Suddenly, the bridge was flooded with the sound of blaring klaxons and Coran moved to stand in front of the twin pedestals in the middle of the room. A large display lit up when he rested his hands on them.

A star chart came up on the screen with a blue dot that Keith assumed marked their own location. He wasn’t sure about the scale of the chart, but the blinking cluster of purple lights looked like they were too close for comfort.

Veronica rushed up to a different console at the front of the bridge, clicking through a few screens before she brought up a video feed of one of those purple ships that had attacked the Blue Lion near earth.

“A Galra battleship has locked onto our position!”

“How did they find us?” Coran yelled back, looking pointedly at the nearest human, who happened to be Allura.

“Galra...?” Lance murmured, sounding lost.

Keith glanced over at the boy who now had a vacant look in his eyes. Veronica had noticed too and quickly stood up, wrapping an arm around his shoulder.

“The Galra are an alien race that are at war with us. They destroyed Altea and _my family_ along with it," she said, putting a strange emphasis on 'family.' "That ship won’t be here for a couple of days, though.”

“Good! Let them come! I’m sure you lot can get Voltron assembled in time, and then we’ll destroy Zarkon’s empire once and for all!”

“Voltron’s made of five lions,” Keith said, walking up to stand between Shiro and Lance. He told himself his position was merely coincidental. “There’s eight people total, and we only have one lion.”

Coran must’ve done _something,_ because the star chart suddenly expanded into a 3-D rendering, surrounding the entire group in holographic stars.

“King Wimbleton connected the lions to Coran’s life force. He’ll be able to find them,” Veronica said by way of explanation, her arm still protectively wrapped around Lance’s shoulder for some reason.

Lance's eyes flickered over to Keith, and it took Keith a lot more effort than he would like to admit to tear his eyes away from the ocean blue ones. Four colored dots had appeared on the star chart.

There was a blue one, which probably represented the Blue Lion, and the black dot was right on top of it. The yellow and green dots were both a bit farther away from the blue one, in opposite directions.

“The Black Lion was locked in the Castle to keep it out of Zarkon’s hands,” Coran explained as everyone observed the map. “I can’t find the Red Lion for some reason, but we can deal with that in a moment.”

Coran gestured at everyone in the room, so they gathered in a circle around him before he continued talking.

“As you have found, the Lions choose their pilots. It’s a mystical bond and can’t be forced. The quintessence of the pilot is mirrored in their lion, and together they become something much more powerful than any mere warship.”

Keith had really been hoping to avoid magic. He didn’t like things that he couldn’t explain. Then again, _magic_ was the only explanation for how he had felt the Blue Lion talking to him in his mind. _Fuck._

“So, magic,” Hunk said, voicing Keith's own thoughts while frowning at the prospect of magical aliens.

“If that’s what you call advanced alchemy back on your home planet, then you’re right,” Veronica hissed, glaring at Hunk.

Coran’s eyes scanned the group, taking everyone in before his eyes landed on Allura and he nodded to himself. A hologram of a ship that looked like a larger version of the Blue Lion with a different paint job appeared, and with a swipe from Coran it floated lazily toward Allura.

“The Black Lion is the decisive head of Voltron. It will take a pilot who's a born leader and in control at all times, someone whose men will follow without hesitation. What’s your name again…?”

“Allura,” the woman in question huffed, giving the alien prince a very unimpressed look.

Keith remembered being on the receiving end of that look when he answered easy physics questions incorrectly back at the Garrison.

“Right, Allura, _you’re_ the Black Paladin.”

Katie looked between the alien prince and her old teacher in confusion.

“Excuse me, uh, your highness? You don’t know anything about us, and you just said the lion chooses its paladin, right? I don’t really--”

“Silence!” Coran shouted, and Katie’s lowered the finger she had raised. “We’re in a bit of a time crunch if you haven’t noticed. And if you really _must_ know how I know which of you will pilot a lion, I can sense your auras. To put it in words your primitive brains can comprehend, its _magic,_ ” he said, waving his arms around and rolling his eyes.

“As I was _saying,_ Allura is the Black Paladin. The Green Lion has an inquisitive personality and needs a pilot of intellect and daring,” he continued, eyes landing on Hunk. “That’s you… Hunk?”

“Yeah, Hunk is me. I am Hunk,” Hunk babbled, distracted by the hologram of the Green Lion floating toward his face.

“Excellent! The Blue Lion needs a compassionate, analytical pilot who’s willing to put aside their own problems and support their fellow paladins. And…” Coran paused, glancing between the people gathered around him. His eyes flickered between Keith and Shiro a few times before he sighed. “Well, I supposed it’s already you, anyway,” he said, flicking the Blue Lion hologram over to Keith.

And Keith had no clue what _that_ meant. Everyone else so far had gotten a very decisive position and he got an ‘I guess’? And where did that leave Shiro, anyway?

“Just like the Blue Lion, the pilot of the Yellow Lion must be willing to put the needs of others above their own. The Yellow and Blue Lions form the legs of Voltron, and while they both support everyone else, they must also be there for each other. Pidge, you will pilot the Yellow Lion.”

As the Yellow Lion hologram floated over to Katie, Keith couldn’t keep the smile off of his face. They’d done everything together so far, and now they were going to have each other's backs as the legs of Voltron, whatever that meant. Katie returned his grin.

“That leaves the Red Lion. It’s temperamental and the most difficult to master. While faster and more agile than the others, it’s much more unstable. The pilot must rely more on instincts than skill alone,” Coran said, looking between Shiro and Lance once again.

Keith secretly hoped it would be Shiro to pilot the lion. He didn’t want to have to work on a team with Lance anyway. For his part, Lance was staring at the ground, looking as if he was lost in his own thoughts, and that was annoying too because _everyone else_ was in awe with the aliens and technology and Voltron, but Lance didn’t seem to be paying attention to any of it. Besides the panic attack in the lion and the mini freak out at the Castle entrance.

He supposed different people just processed encountering alien civilizations differently.

Coran was clearly deliberating for longer than he had with the other lions, and Keith held his breath.

“You,” Coran finally said, pointing at Lance, who slowly raised his head to stare back at the alien. “Your aura is… you must've ended so many li--”

“So who’ll be the Red Paladin?” Veronica asked, and if Keith hadn’t already been suspicious before he definitely was now.

He didn’t have a theory, exactly, but it seemed like they knew each other somehow. And Lance had the marks, Keith had the crumpled up photo in his pocket as evidence. But there was no way Lance was 10,000 years old, unless Alteans just had really long life-spans, and really, who was he to know? Maybe it was more magic.

“I don’t know your name, but…” Coran hesitated again, finally appearing to steal himself as the Red Lion floated toward Lance. “It's your lucky day. You’re the Red Paladin.”

Keith glanced over at Shiro, who was clearly struggling to school his facial expression into something neutral. _Right,_ he hadn’t gotten a lion.

“Shiro, you’ll be with Veronica. She’ll show you the ropes around the Castle. We needed an extra hand on deck, even before all of this happened,” Coran said, and all of the tension seemed to bleed out of Shiro.

He was probably glad to have something to do. Keith knew how much Shiro hated feeling useless.

After Coran finished assigning everyone their roles, he turned back toward the holograms floating above their heads. With a swipe, the lions all converged and formed a giant mech -- the mechanical man from the cave paintings and the shared vision everyone had in the cave. They needed to _combine_ the lions to form Voltron. _Neat._

“Once all the Lions are united, you’ll form Voltron, the most powerful warrior ever known," Coran said, pausing for dramatic effect as he swept his arms out and the star map zoomed out, the dots becoming infinitesimally small, lost in a sea of stars. "Defender of the Altean people.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOL the only other Altean names I know are Honerva and Romelle, sue me. Also, if Coran's full name can be Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe, I think its okay for Lance's Altean name to be Lance McClain. Just saying (also maybe I couldn't think of any Altean last names like seriously what). I tried to explain Lance's backstory while also keeping it pretty vague so that the prequel will actually be interesting hahaha.
> 
> You might've noticed that I changed about 1 billion parts of the pilot, but the biggest thing that I hope you noticed is that Voltron is the 'Defender of the Altean people' instead of the universe. Because Voltron was built to aid Altea in their war against the Galra in this universe, and the Alteans were't quite so noble. More explanation to come in the prequel, if you're still confused.
> 
> One more thing I'll say: remember how Allura said she remembered that Zarkon had held her prisoner? She remembered wrong. If you remember, she crashed on earth in an Altean pod and she has an Altean prosthetic leg. She was a prisoner of the Alteans, but as seen from the bit of Lance's backstory that we got, the Alteans enjoy fucking with people's memories.
> 
> Thanks for reading, lovelies! You all leave the nicest comments and honestly, every single one makes me smile. <333

**Author's Note:**

> Brief descriptions so you can figure out what the fuck is going on!
> 
>  **Lance** \- Orphan, top of the class, lots of disciplinary issues. He was an Altean soldier who somehow crash landed on earth. Allura found him and brought him to the Garrison so she could look out for him.
> 
>  **Shiro** \- Helped Lance unravel the Galaxy Garrison’s cover-up of the Kerberos mission and was forced to fake his death when the Garrison threatened his family. He has been living with Lance in the desert for a while.
> 
>  **Keith** \- His family (Acxa, Krolia, and Kolivan) are all alive and humans. He’s still Shiro’s friend and had a crush on Lance.
> 
>  **Hunk** \- His two moms were on the Kerberos mission with Allura. He’s a master hacker and communications officer and also has an obsession with video games.
> 
>  **Pidge** \- Genius engineer. Smol, yellow, pukes (LOL), eventually finds Voltron. Learned cooking from her family.
> 
>  **Allura** \- White hair (duh), badass scar, PTSD (hello). Also a famous pilot, has all the records. She was a teacher at the Garrison before disappearing. HC that she’s from Guyana (a former british colony in SA).
> 
>  **Coran** \- Nah, he’s the Altean prince frozen in time -- he knew the McClain family. Have not decided who his advisor is yet, but I’m thinking Veronica.
> 
> *wrestling announcer voice* t-t-t-t- ** _[TUMBLR](https://crapoftheworldblr.tumblr.com/)_**


End file.
